A new normal form for monodromic nilpotent singularities of planar vector fields (Q2050119)

The paper is devoted to the center problem for nilpotent singularities of planar vector fields. A classical result is that such a vector field can be formally brought to the Bogdanov-Takens normal form \(\dot x = y + a(x)\), \(\dot y = b(x)\), where \(a(x)\) and \(b(x)\) are formal power series containing terms of degree \(\ge 2\). Moreover, it can be reduced to the orbital normal form \[ \dot x = y + a(x), \ \ \dot y = \pm x^p, \ \ p \ge 2, \tag{1} \] by a change of time. The monodromy case in (1) is for \(\dot y = -x^{2n+1}\). In the monodromy case, the origin is a center if and only if the series \(a(x)\) is even, and (1) is analytically integrable if and only if \(a(x) \equiv 0\). It should be remarked that the reduction of the original vector field to the normal form (1) is difficult to implement due to elimination of all terms that do not appear in (1). Everything said above is previously known. In the present paper, the authors present a new technique for solving the center problem for nilpotent singularities, which consists of determining a new normal form conveniently adapted to study the center problem for this singularity. The new normal form (also formal) is less elaborated than (1), whence it requires to eliminate less terms of the original field. This allows to approach the center problem more efficiently.