The problem of distinguishing between a center and a focus for nilpotent and degenerate analytic systems (Q2498840)

Consider a planar analytic system having a critical point of center type. After an affine change of coordinates it can be written in one of the following three canonical forms (1) \(\dot x=-y+F_1(x,y)\), \(\dot y=x+F_2(x,y);\) (2) \(\dot x=y+F_1(x,y)\), \(\dot y=F_2(x,y);\) (3) \(\dot x=F_1(x,y)\), \(\dot y=F_2(x,y), \) where \(F_1\) and \(F_2\) are analytic functions without constant and linear terms. It is called linear type, nilpotent or degenerated center, respectively. The authors prove the following results: (i) Assume that the origin of (2) is a center, then there exist analytic functions \(G_1\) and \(G_2\) without constant terms, given in the paper and in its corrigendum [the authors, to appear in J. Differ. Equations (2007)], such that the system \[ \dot x=y+F_1(x,y)+\varepsilon G_1(x,y),\quad \dot y=-\varepsilon x+ F_2(x,y)+\varepsilon G_2(x,y),\tag{\(*\)} \] has a center at the origin for all \(\varepsilon>0;\) (ii) Suppose that the origin of (2) or (3) is monodromic and that this system is limit of centers of the form (\(*\)) or \[ \dot x=\varepsilon y+F_1(x,y)+\varepsilon G_1(x,y,\varepsilon),\quad \dot y=-\varepsilon x+ F_2(x,y)+\varepsilon G_2(x,y,\varepsilon),\tag{\(**\)} \] respectively. Supose also that there are no singular points of (\(*\)) or (\(**\)) tending to the origin when \(\varepsilon\) tends to zero. Then, system (2) or (3) has a center at the origin. The problem whether a monodromic critical point is either a focus or a center is usually called center-focus problem. The above results allow one to reduce the study of the center-focus problem of all nilpotent critical points and of some classes of degenerate critical points to the center-focus problem for linear-type centers. Recall that for this later case, several constructive procedures are well known. Their results are applied to several examples solved in the literature by different methods. It is also worth to mention, as is already noticed by the authors, that this approach can not be applied to detect all degenerated centers.