Limit cycle bifurcations of some Liénard systems (Q2268083)

At first some general theorems on limit cycle bifurcations for near-Hamiltonian systems near a double homoclinic loop or a center are presented. Then the authors use these theorems to study a Liénard system in the form \[ \dot{x}=y, \;\dot{y}=-(x^3+bx^2-x) - \varepsilon f(x, \delta)y, \] where \(b>0,\) \(f(x, \delta)=\sum_{i=0}^n a_{i+1}x^i,\) \(\delta=(a_1, a_2,\dots,a_{n+1}),\) \(n\geq 2\) and \(\varepsilon >0\) is small. For the cases \(n=3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8\) the paper contain results which improve all existing estimations for the lower bound of the number of limit cycles.