We show that the local equivalence problem of second-order ordinary differential equations under point transformations is completely characterized by differential invariants of order at most 10 and that this upper bound is sharp. We also demonstrate that, modulo Cartan duality and point transformations, the Painlevé-I equation can be characterized as the simplest second-order ordinary differential equation belonging to the class of equations requiring 10th order jets for their classification.
Formalization of the problem and resultsFollowing standard practices, [12,25], we let p = u x , q = u xx denote the first and second order derivatives of a single variable function u = u(x). Then, two second-order ordinary differential equations q = f (x, u, p) and Q = F (X, U, P ), p = u x , q = u xx , P = U X , Q = U XX ,