Abstract and Applied Analysis

Volume 2012 (2012), Article ID 720830, 28 pages

doi:10.1155/2012/720830

Research Article

Limit Cycle Bifurcations from a Nilpotent Focus or Center of Planar Systems

Maoan Han1,2 and Valery G. Romanovski2,3

¹Department of Mathematics, Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai 200234, China

²Faculty of Natural Science and Mathematics, University of Maribor, 2000 Maribor, Slovenia

³Center for Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, University of Maribor, 2000 Maribor, Slovenia

Received 11 August 2012; Accepted 28 October 2012

Academic Editor: Jaume Giné

Copyright © 2012 Maoan Han and Valery G. Romanovski. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract.

We study analytic properties of the Poincaré return map and generalized focal values of analytic planar systems with a nilpotent focus or center. We use the focal values and the map to study the number of limit cycles of this kind of systems and obtain some new results on the lower and upper bounds of the maximal number of limit cycles bifurcating from the nilpotent focus or center. The main results generalize the classical Hopf bifurcation theory and establish the new bifurcation theory for the nilpotent case.

1. Introduction and Main Result

Consider an analytic system of the form:

where , , and for near the origin. A Poincaré map can be defined on a cross-section with an endpoint at the origin using positive orbits of the above system and can be written in the form:

where the series converges for small . A well-known fact is that for any for all imply that ; that is, only odd values of the expansion are important for determining the behavior of trajectories near the origin. The value is called the th focal value or the th Lyapunov constant. For quadratic systems, Bautin [1] proved that the Poincaré map can be written in the form:

where . This implies that there are at most 3 limit cycles near the origin.

Suppose now that the origin is a nilpotent singular point, so the system is written in the form:

where , for near the origin. The following criterion for the existence of a center or a focus at the origin of (1.4) has been established in [2–4].

Theorem 1.1 (see [2–4]). Let (1.4) have an isolated singular point at the origin. Let

where is the solution to the equation satisfying . Then the origin of (1.4) is a center or a focus if and only if is negative and .

Introducing the generalized polar coordinates:

where is the solution of the initial problem

Liapunov [3, 4] proposed a method to solve the center-focus problem for (1.4). Sadovskiĭ [5] (see also [6]) and Moussu [7] investigated the problem using Lyapunov functions and normal forms, respectively. Other few approaches for computing focal values, Lyapunov constants or equivalent values and methods for studying bifurcations of local limit cycles were suggested by Chavarriga et al. [8], Giacomini et al. [9], Álvarez and Gasull [10, 11], and Liu and Li [12–15]. From [16] we know that (1.4) can be formally transformed into a formal normal form:

where , (system (1.8) is a generalized Liénard system). Stróżyna and Żołądek [17] proved that this formal normal form can be achieved through an analytic change of variables. Thus, if (1.4) has a center or focus at the origin, then it can be changed into (1.8) with

According to [11] under (1.9) by a change of variables and of the form:

system (1.8) is transformed into

where

Then, by Theorem 1.1 system (1.11) has a center or a focus at the origin if and only if the function given in (1.12) satisfies

By Filippov's theorem (see, e.g., Ye et al. [18]) under (1.13) system (1.11) has a stable (unstable) focus at the origin if there exists an integer with such that

and it has a center at the origin if for all .

Passing to the generalized polar coordinates we obtain from (1.11) the following equation:

The function on the right hand side of (1.15) is periodic of the period . Let denote the solution of (1.15) with the initial value . Then the Poincaré map of (1.15) has the form:

Assuming that Álvarez and Gasull [11] called the constant the th generalized Lyapunov constant of (1.15) (we will see that this definition is too rough since a half of the constants cannot be used to determine the stability of the origin of (1.8) or (1.11)). They also studied the normal form (1.11) and proved the following theorem.

Theorem 1.2 (see [11]). Let (1.13) and (1.14) be satisfied. Then

(1) if ;(2), for , and if either or and is even, where is a positive constant.

In the case Liu and Li [12] introduced different generalized polar coordinates of the form , to change (1.4) into the form:

where it is assumed that the origin is a center or a focus. Let denote the solution of the -periodic system

satisfying . Note that the initial value problem is well defined also for negative .

Let be a simply connected domain. Denote by the ring of analytic functions on and by the ideal in generated by the functions from . Liu and Li [12] found the following facts.

Theorem 1.3 (see [12]). Consider system (1.4). Let the conditions of Theorem 1.1 be satisfied with (or ) so that the origin is a center or a focus. Then

(1).(2), where

 In particular, , imply that .(3) The origin is a stable (unstable) focus if

In the latter case the origin is called a th order weak focus of (1.4).

We remark that the conclusions of Theorem 1.3 provide new and useful information on the property of the coefficients . Liu and Li [12] also gave some new methods to compute the focal values , or equivalent values and studied the problem of limit cycle bifurcations near the origin (using the second conclusion of the above theorem). They found a new phenomenon: a node can generate a limit cycle when its stability changes.

In this paper we study the problem of limit cycle bifurcations near the origin of the analytic system

where , is a simply connected domain, and for small and .

To perform our analysis we first introduce a novel Poincaré map using a specific transversal section, study its analytical properties (Theorems 1.5 and 1.6), and then give a new definition of generalized focal values (or generalized Lyapunov constants) following [12]. Second, using the Poincaré map together with the generalized focal values we establish new bifurcation theory of limit cycles from a nilpotent focus or center and obtain conditions for finding a lower bound and an upper bound of the maximal number of limit cycles bifurcated directly from the nilpotent point (Theorems 1.7 and 1.8). Third, we provide a new method to compute the generalized focal values using the normal form (Theorems 1.10 and 1.11). Moreover, we prove that the normal form and the original system have the same generalized focal values when the higher-order term has a sufficiently high order (Theorem 1.12 and Corollary 1.13). For polynomial systems we prove that the maximal order of a nilpotent focus is uniformly bounded (Theorem 1.14). All these results directly generalize the classical Hopf bifurcation theory and establish the new bifurcation theory in the nilpotent case.

We now state our main results more precisely. Let be the solution to the equation . We define the following two functions:

By Theorem 1.1, if

then the origin is a center or a focus of (1.21) for all . For convenience, we introduce the following definition.

Definition 1.4. Let for all (1.23) and (1.24) be satisfied for some so that the the origin is a center or a focus of (1.21). In this case we say that (1.21) has a singular point of multiplicity at the origin.

Next, let us define a Poincaré return map for the planar system (1.21). For each and with small consider the solution of (1.21) with the initial condition . Then there is a unique least positive number such that and (see Figure 1 for the case of small ).

Figure 1: The Poincaré map of (1.21) with .

Assume that for all (1.23) and (1.24) are satisfied, so that the solution exists for , where is a small positive constant. Define

The map is the Poincaré map we will use for the remainder of the paper.

Obviously, the function is continuous at if (1.23) and (1.24) hold. It is easily seen that (1.21) has a periodic orbit near the origin if and only if the map has two fixed points near zero: one positive and the other one negative. Moreover, we note that the function is uniquely defined since the Poincaré section is chosen to be on the curve . This enables us to obtain some nice analytical properties of this function at , as stated in the following theorem.

Theorem 1.5. Let (1.21) satisfy (1.23) and (1.24) for all . Then there is a unique analytic function in at , satisfying and such that the displacement function has the expansion

for sufficiently small, where

(1)if is odd, then for all small;(2)if is even, then for all small

where denotes the inverse of in .

It follows from the theorem that system (1.21) has a periodic orbit near the origin if and only if the analytic function defined by (1.26) has two zeros in near , among which one is positive and the other one is negative. The function is called the displacement function or the bifurcation function of (1.21).

The above theorem tells us that the function is analytic in at if is odd, and not analytic in at if is even unless the origin is a center (in this case is the identity). The theorem is a natural generalization of the case of elementary center or focus to the nilpotent case (), but it deals with two different cases (odd and even ), and the phenomenon in the case of even is new.

For the property of the coefficients in (1.26) we have the following theorem which is more general than Theorem 1.3.

Theorem 1.6. Let (1.21) satisfy (1.23) and (1.24) for all . Then

(1)for odd we have ;(2)for even we have , .

Define . Then the conclusions of the above theorem can be written uniformly as

From the proof of Theorem 1.6 we will see that depends on smoothly. Using Theorem 1.6 we derive the following two statements on limit cycle bifurcations near the origin.

Theorem 1.7 (Bifurcations from the Focus). Let (1.21) satisfy (1.23) and (1.24) for all . Denote that .

(1) If there is an integer such that

 then there exists a neighborhood of the origin such that (1.21) has at most limit cycles in for all , where is any compact subset of .(2) If there is such that , then for all near (1.21) has at most limit cycles in a neighborhood of the origin. If further,

 then for an arbitrary sufficiently small neighborhood of the origin there are some near such that (1.21) has exactly limit cycles in the neighborhood.

Theorem 1.8 (Bifurcations from the Center). Let (1.21) satisfy (1.23) and (1.24) for all . Assume

(i) there exist and an integer such that (1.30) is satisfied,(ii) the origin is a center of (1.21) if , , then there exists a neighborhood of the origin such that (1.21) has at most limit cycles in for all near , and also, for an arbitrary sufficiently small neighborhood of the origin, there are some near such that (1.21) has exactly limit cycles in the neighborhood. Hence, the cyclicity of the system at the point is equal to .

Now, different from [11–15], we give the following definition.

Definition 1.9. We call the generalized focal value of order of (1.21) at the origin and call the origin a focus of order if and for .

The above definition is very reasonable and natural, since by Theorem 1.7, we see that a nilpotent focus of order generates at most limit cycles under perturbations which satisfy (1.23) and (1.24).

By the above definition, condition (ii) of Theorem 1.8 means that the origin is a focus of (1.21) of order at most . This condition alone is not enough to ensure the conclusion of the theorem. For example, using Theorem 1.10 stated below one can prove that the system

has exactly two limit cycles near the origin for . But, the focus at the origin has the order at most 1 for (the origin is a center for ).

The generalized focal values can be calculated using the normal form of system (1.21). We will give a different method to compute them. From a result of Stróżyna and Żołądek [17] we know that (1.21) has the analytic normal form:

Note that and in (1.32) may be different from the ones given by (1.22). As before, let where is a domain. Also, suppose that for small the function satisfies (1.23). Define

It is easy to see that for the equation defines a unique analytic function . Set

By Theorem 1.1, if (1.32) satisfies (1.23) and (1.24), then it has a center or focus at the origin. Thus, under (1.23) and (1.24) the Poincaré map for (1.32) is well defined near the origin.

Theorem 1.10. Let (1.32) satisfy (1.23) and (1.24) for all . Then, for small, the Poincaré map has the form:

where ,

, , are positive constants and . Thus, Theorems 1.7 and 1.8 hold if is replaced by , .

Let

For system (1.32) we have the following result.

Theorem 1.11. Let (1.32) satisfy (1.23), (1.34), and (1.37) for all . Assume there exist and such that

Let one of the following conditions be satisfied:

(a), and

(b), , , and

Then

(1)for (1.32) has a stable (unstable) focus at the origin.(2)If further

then for an arbitrary sufficiently small neighborhood of the origin there are some near such that (1.32) has at least limit cycles in the neighborhood.

From Theorems 1.5–1.10, it seems that under (1.23) and (1.24) we have solved the problem of limit cycle bifurcation for generic systems. Theoretically it is, but in practice it is not. The reason is that in general we do not know what is the transformation from (1.21) to its normal form (1.32). Here we give a method to solve the problem completely both theoretically and in practice. It includes three main steps described below.

Under (1.23) and (1.24) by the normal form theory (see, e.g., [16]) for any integer there is a change of variables of the form:

where is a polynomial in of degree at most , such that it transforms (1.21) into (1.43) (called the normal form of order of (1.21), or the Takens normal form; we still use for the new variables )

where

with and , and , being analytic functions satisfying . Here, we should mention that the functions and depend only on the terms of degree at most of the expansions of the functions and in (1.21) at the origin.

The Poincaré maps of (1.21) and (1.43) are essentially the same. Denote the Poincaré map of (1.43) by , and then the displacement function has the expansion

where the series converge for small .

Truncating the series (1.43) at terms of order we obtain the polynomial system

In practice, for given system (1.21) it is not difficult to find the corresponding system (1.46). For (1.46) we can use Theorem 1.10 to find its focal values at the origin up to any large order. Let denote the Poincaré map of (1.46). We write the expansion of the displacement function as

where the series converge for small .

We intend to use instead of . To this end, we have to solve the following problem. For any given find such that for . The following theorem gives a solution.

Theorem 1.12. Consider (1.43) and (1.46). Then, for any integer , if , then

Therefore, we have the following.

Corollary 1.13. Under (1.23) and (1.24) for any integer for (1.21) the coefficients in (1.26) depend only on the terms of degree at most of the expansions of the functions and at the origin.

In the case of elementary center or focus, the above conclusion is well-known.

Finally, we consider the following polynomial system of degree

Theorem 1.14. For any there is an integer such that an arbitrary polynomial system of the form (1.49) has a singular point of multiplicity at most at the origin (i.e., one must have if (1.49) satisfies (1.23) and (1.24), see Definition 1.4). Further, for each , if (1.49) satisfies (1.23) and (1.24), then there exists an integer such that for (1.49) the origin is a focus of order at most . Hence, the origin as a nilpotent focus of (1.49) generates at most limit cycles.

We organize the paper as follows. In Section 2 we give preliminary lemmas. In Section 3 we prove our main results. In Section 4 few examples are provided.

2. Preliminaries

Consider system (1.21). In this section we will always suppose that (1.23) and (1.24) are satisfied. Introducing the new variable we obtain from (1.21) (reusing for )

where the functions and are given by (1.22), and are analytic functions near the origin with . In the discussion below for convenience we will often omit . As suggested by Liu and Li in [15] we pass in (2.1) to the generalized polar coordinates

Lemma 2.1. Let (1.23) and (1.24) be satisfied. Then the substitution (2.2) transforms (2.1) into the system

where and are -periodic in and have the properties

Proof. From (2.2) we have

We solve the above equations for and and obtain (2.3) with

Then noting that

and that (2.2) is invariant as is replaced by one can easily prove (2.4). The other conclusions are direct. This ends the proof.

By (2.3) and (2.4) we obtain the following analytic -periodic equation

where

Let denote the solution of (2.9) with the initial value . For properties of the solution we have the following.

Lemma 2.2. The solution is analytic in for small and satisfies the following:

(1);(2).

Proof. Let . Then by (2.9) and (2.10) we have

This means that is also a solution to (2.9). Then the first conclusion follows from the uniqueness of the solution to the initial problem. The second one follows in the same way. This completes the proof.

Further we have the following.

Lemma 2.3. Let be the Poincaré return map of (1.21) defined in Section 1. Then for small we have for , and for .

Proof. First, it is easy to see that (1.21) and (2.1) have the same Poincaré map . Then, noting from (2.3) that for small , by the definition of and (2.2), we see that

for small. Now consider the case of . Let denote the solution of (2.9) satisfying . Similarly as above we have

since under (2.2) the points and on the plane correspond to the points and on the plane, respectively.

Further, by Lemma 2.2(1), we have

Noting that, by Lemma 2.2(2), if and only if , we see that (2.15) becomes

Therefore, by (2.14) and (2.16) we have for

This ends the proof.

Lemma 2.4. Let . Then there exists an analytic function convergent for small with such that

for small, where .

Proof. By Lemma 2.2, we have

Hence, by Lemma 2.3 for

where

It is obvious that is analytic for small and . This completes the proof.

3. Proof of the Main Results

In this section we prove our main results presented in Theorems 1.5–1.12.

Proof of Theorem 1.5. We take for small. Then by Lemma 2.2   is analytic. Note that by Lemma 2.2, is the inverse of in . Then Theorem 1.5 follows directly from Lemma 2.3. The proof is complete.

Proof of Theorem 1.6. There are two cases to consider separately.

Case A ( odd). By (1.26) and Theorem 1.5(1), we have

for all small.

By Lemma 2.4, we can suppose that

where , . Substituting (3.1) and (3.2) into (2.18), we obtain

Comparing the coefficients of the terms , and on both sides yields

where , , are polynomials. Thus, from the above equations we obtain

Case B ( even). By (1.26) and we find that

where

and each is a polynomial of degree at least 2. Now we suppose that . Then (3.1) holds by Theorem 1.5. Further, noting that by Theorem 1.5 again

Then, inserting (3.1), (3.2), (3.6), and (3.8) into (2.18) we obtain

where

Finally, noting that and substituting (3.7) into (3.9) we easily see that

This ends the proof.

Proof of Theorem 1.7. For the first part, suppose that the conclusion is not true. Then there exists a sequence in such that for (1.21) has limit cycles which approach the origin as . Then by Theorem 1.6, the function has nonzero roots in which approach zero as .

Since is compact, we can assume as . By our assumption, . Thus, for some ,

Therefore, by (1.26) and Theorem 1.6, we have

Note that . It follows from Rolle's theorem (see [1]) that for some the function has at most nonzero roots in for all . We have proved that the function has nonzero roots which approach zero as . It then follows that , contradicting to . The first conclusion follows.

For the second one, from the above proof one can see that for all near (1.21) has at most limit cycles in a neighborhood of the origin. Then, by Theorem 1.6, the displacement function can be written as

where . Like in [19] one can show that are series convergent in a neighborhood of (see also, e.g., [20, 21]). Further, by (1.30), we can take as free parameters, varying near zero. Precisely, if we change them such that

then by (3.14) the function has exactly positive zeros in near , which give limit cycles. This finishes the proof.

By Theorem 1.5 and (3.14) we immediately have the following.

Corollary 3.1. Let (1.21) satisfy (1.23) and (1.24) for a fixed . Then, if

then the origin is a stable (unstable) focus of order of (1.21). If

the origin is a center of (1.21).

Proof of Theorem 1.8. Under (1.30) the values can be taken as free parameters. Further, by our assumption, the origin is a center of (1.21) as , . It then follows that

Therefore, (3.14) can be further written in the form:

where and are series convergent in a neighborhood of [19]. Using the reasoning of Bautin [1] (see also e.g., [20–22]) one can easily see that the conclusion of the theorem holds. The proof is completed.

Proof of Theorem 1.10. Now we consider (1.32), where satisfies (1.23). Let

If satisfies (1.24), then the origin is a center or focus of (1.32), and

where

and satisfies for small. Note that (1.32) is equivalent to the following system:

which has the same Poincaré return map as (1.32). Introducing the change of variables and

system (3.23) becomes

which is equivalent to

where

The systems (3.25) and (3.26) have the same Poincaré return map, denoted by . One can see that the maps and have the relation . Hence,

where is analytic. By (1.26) and (3.14), for small we have

Hence,

where , .

Since satisfies and for small, we have or , where . Thus, we have

Let

Then

Thus, by (3.31) we have

Substituting into the above equality and comparing with (3.21) we obtain

where , , are positive constants and .

Then by Theorem 1.5 for small we clearly have

where are introduced before Theorem 1.2. Thus, by Theorem 1.2, we have

for odd, and

for even, where , are positive constants. Hence,

where . Note that (1.32) is analytic in each . It follows from Theorem 1.5 that is analytic in , which yields . Then (3.35) and (3.39) together give

where .

Then (1.36) follows from (3.30) and (3.40). This finishes the proof.

Proof of Theorem 1.11. Let be small. For we have . Then the first conclusion follows directly from Corollary 3.1 and (1.36)–(1.39). In fact, we have by Theorem 1.10

For the second conclusion, we first keep and vary near zero to obtain exactly simple limit cycles near the origin. These limit cycles are bifurcated by changing the stability of the focus at the origin times. Then we vary such that , and . This step produces one more limit cycle bifurcated from the origin by changing the stability of the origin which is a node now by [23]. The theorem is proved for the case .

For since , we have

if

for some . In this case the origin is a stable (unstable) focus of (3.23) by Theorem 1.10. If (3.43) holds for some , then by [23] again the origin is a stable (unstable) node of (3.23). Thus, we can proceed similarly as above. The proof is complete.

We remark that if , then .

Proof of Theorem 1.12. Consider (1.43). Without loss of generality, we can assume in (1.43) (otherwise, introduce the change of variables ). In this case, we can write (1.43) into the form:

where

For the sake of convenience we rewrite the functions , , and as follows:

where , , and , , , are polynomials in of degree at most , and , , are polynomials in with degree at most .

Now we change (3.44) using (2.2) to the system

where by (3.46)

This yields the equation

where

By (3.48) and (3.50) we can further expand and in to obtain for

so that the above differential equation can be written as

Further, letting

we obtain

Note that for any , depends only on with . Then by (3.54) one can see that,

Let denote the solution of (3.55) with the initial value . The for small we have

where satisfy , , and

which implies that, for any , the function depends only on with . Hence, by Lemma 2.3, (1.45), and (3.56) we come to the following conclusion.

Further, by (3.48)–(3.51), one can observe that, for , and depend only on the coefficients of degree of the polynomials , , and in . Hence, by (3.59) we see that for , depends only on the coefficients of degree at most of the polynomials , and in .

Similarly, for and , or , and depend only on the coefficients of degree of the polynomials , , and with in . In other words, for , , and depend only on the coefficients of degree of the polynomials , , and with in . Let denote the set of integers in the interval . Then, for , we have

Thus, for all , and depend only on , , , and with . And for , and depend only on the coefficients of degree of the polynomials , , , and with in .

Therefore, by (3.59) for , depends only on the functions , , and with , and the coefficients of degree at most of the polynomials , , , and with in .

We claim that if , , then, for , depends only on the functions , , with and the coefficients of degree at most of the polynomials , in .

In fact, by the above discussion, we need only to prove in the case and for and in the case . This can be shown easily since

by (3.45) and (3.46).

By (3.46), the above claim can be restated as the claim that if , , then for , depends only on the coefficients of degree at most of and the coefficients of degree at most of in . Thus, for any integers and satisfying and , taking we see that, for all , depends only on the coefficients of degree at most of and the coefficients of degree at most of in .

Finally, by (3.45), if , then

In this case, for all , depends only on and in (3.45). Then the conclusion of Theorem 1.12 follows.

Proof of Theorem 1.14. Let

Then (1.49) is equivalent to an analytic system of the form (2.1), where the functions and are given by (1.22). We can write

where all are polynomials in and . Thus, by the well-known Hilbert basis theorem there exists such that for all if . That is, imply that . In this case, all points on the line and near the origin are singular for (2.1). Thus, the origin has a multiplicity at most as a nilpotent focus or center.

Further, for any let (1.49) have a nilpotent focus or center at the origin, having multiplicity . Then for any sufficiently large , (1.49) is equivalent to a system of the form (1.43), where the coefficients in and in are all polynomials in and . Moreover, and . Let

and satisfies . Then, noting that

where all are polynomials in , , and , one can see that all are polynomials in , , and . Therefore, if we let

where , then all are polynomials in , , and . By Theorems 1.10 and 1.12, for any integer there exists an integer such that , are independent of for all , denoting by . Then, we have defined a series of coefficients for all , which are all polynomials in , , and . Again, by the Hilbert basis theorem there exists such that

Now, we take and such that , . Then by Theorems 1.10 and 1.12 again, for (1.49) we have

yielding , . Then the conclusion follows.

4. Application Examples

In this section we provide some application examples based on the ones given in [11]. Consider a Kukles type system of the form

The authors of [11] proved that if and , then for (4.1) if and only if , which implies that the origin is a center. Moreover, there can be 3 limit cycles near the origin. See Theorem 4.1 in [11] and its proof.

From this conclusion and Theorem 1.7 we have immediately the following.

Proposition 4.1. Let , , , , , and be bounded parameters satisfying

Then there exists a neighborhood of the origin such that the system (4.1) has at most limit cycles in .

Consider now the system

By Theorem 4.2 in [11] and its proof if , then the origin of (4.3) is always a focus with . Moreover, there are systems inside (4.3) with at least 3 limit cycles around the origin. Then by Theorem 1.7 again we have the following.

Proposition 4.2. Let , and be bounded parameters with . Then there exists a neighborhood of the origin such that the system (4.3) has at most limit cycles in .

Finally, consider the system

where . By Theorems 1.8–1.11, we obtain the following.

Proposition 4.3. Let be bounded parameters. Then

(1)if , the system (4.4) has at most limit cycles near the origin, and limit cycles can appear.(2)If , there are systems inside (4.4) which have at least limit cycles near the origin.

Acknowledgments

The project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (10971139), the Slovenian Research Agency, and a Marie Curie International Research Staff Exchange Scheme Fellowship within the 7th European Community Programme, FP7-PEOPLE-2012-IRSES-316338. The authors thank the referees for their valuable remarks and helpful suggestions.

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