Bifurcation of limit cycles from quadratic isochrones (Q810240)

The authors treat real-analytic one parameter families of o.d.e.'s \[ (1_{\epsilon})\quad \dot x=P(x,y)+\epsilon p(x,y,\epsilon),\quad \dot y=Q(x,y)+\epsilon q(x,y,\epsilon), \] where P, Q, p(\(\cdot,\epsilon)\), q(\(\cdot,\epsilon)\) are quadratic polynomials, and the unperturbed system \((1_ 0)\) has an isochronous center. The aim of this paper is to establish the maximal number N of limit cycles emerging from periodic orbits of \((1_ 0)\) when \(\epsilon\) adopts nonzero values. To solve this problem, a well known integral representation of the so-called displacement function (a forerunner of the now widely investigated abelian integrals) is used and, moreover, a famous result of Bautin is applied. In terms of Sibirskij's classification of systems \((1_ 0)\) with isochronous centers, sharp upper bounds of N are obtained which equal 1, 2 or 3 depending on the Sibirskij class realized by \((1_ 0)\). In a parallel paper by the first author [Bifurcations of planar vector fields, Proc. Meet., Luminy/Fr. 1989, Lect. Notes Math. 1455, 20-43 (1990)], some of these results are extended to cubic systems with non- isochronous centers.