Recently many analytical methods have been used to solve Lane–Emden equations, the main difficulty arises in the singularity of the equation at x = 0. Currently most techniques in use for handling the Lane–Emden-type problems are based on either series solutions or perturbation techniques. Bender et al. [4] handled the solution of Lane–Emden equations as well as those of a variety of nonlinear problems in quantum mechanics and astrophysics by means of perturbation methods based on the existence of a small parameter. Approximate solutions to the above problems were presented by Shawagfeh [5] and Wazwaz [6,7] by applying the Adomian method which provides a convergent series solution. Nouh [8] accelerated the convergence of a power series solution of the Lane–Emden equation by using an Euler–Abel transformation and Padé approximation. Mandelzweig and Tabakin [9] applied Bellman and Kalaba’s quasilinearization method and Ramos [10] used an piecewise linearization technique based on the piecewise linearization of the Lane–Emden equation. Bozkhov and Martins [11] and later Momoniat and Harley [12] applied the Lie Group method successfully to generalized Lane–Emden equations of the first kind. Exact solutions of generalized Lane–Emden solutions of the first kind are investigated by Goenner and Havas [13]. Laio [14] solved Lane–Emden type equations by applying a homotopy analysis method. He [15] obtained an approximate analytical solution of the Lane–Emden equation by applying a variational approach which uses a semi- inverse method. Ramos [16] presented a series approach to the Lane–Emden equation and gave the comparison with He’s homotopy perturbation method. The authors of this paper, Yıldırım and Öziş [17] and also Chowdhury and Hashim [18] gave the solutions of a class of singular second-order IVPs of Lane–Emden type by using He’s homotopy perturbation method.
Recently, Dehghan and Shakeri [19] first applied an exponential transformation to the Lane–Emden equation to overcome the difficulty of a singular point at x = 0 and solved the resulting nonsingular problem by the variational iteration method. In this paper, we aim to employ the variational iteration method to a singular form of Lane–Emden type initial value
problems directly.