Perturbation of a piecewise regular-singular Liénard system (Q6140134)

In this paper, the author consider the perturbation of a planar piecewise Liénard system defined in two regions separated by the line \(x=0\). In the \(x\leq 0\) region the system is regular and in the region \(x>0\) the system is singularly perturbed. Under the assumption of the paper, the origin \((0, 0)\) of the unperturbed system is on the transition line \(x=0\) of the two subsystems. After perturbation, an elementary anti-saddle is created which moves into the region \(x<0\). Thus \((0, 0)\) can be viewed as a degenerate canard point for which the author presents new analytical tools using a blow-up analysis. The author prove that under generic conditions, the perturbed system has at most one small-amplitude limit cycle and at most \(N\) canard limit cycles, where \(N\) is the number of local extrema of the function \(F(x)\) in the singular part of the system. The mechanism of a canard explosion is investigated for critical values of the control parameters. The theoretical results are applied to a Gause predator-prey system with a general monotonic functional response function with cut-off, and find that the upper bound of the limit cycles is \(2 \tilde{N}\), where \(\tilde{N}\) is the number of maxima of the prey growth rate function after the cut-off.