Isomeric trees and the order of Runge–Kutta methods

The conditions for a Runge–Kutta method to be of order p with p≥5 for a scalar non-autonomous problem are a proper subset of the order conditions for a vector problem. Nevertheless, Runge–Kutta methods that were derived historically only for scalar problems happened to be of the same order for vector problems. We relate the order conditions for scalar problems to factorisations of the Runge–Kutta trees into “atomic stumps” and enumerate those conditions up to p=20. Using a special search procedure over unsatisfied order conditions, new Runge–Kutta methods of “ambiguous orders” five and six are constructed. These are used to verify the validity of the results.