The number of limit cycles for regularized piecewise polynomial systems is unbounded (Q2097007)

In the paper, the authors studied the following smooth system \[ \dot{z}=Z(z,\phi(h(z)\varepsilon^{-1})), \] where \(z\in\mathbb{R}^2\), \(0<\varepsilon<<1\), \(h:\mathbb{R}^2\rightarrow\mathbb{R}\) is regular, \(\phi\) is a regularization function satisfying \[ \phi'(s)>0\ for\ all\ s\in\mathbb{R}, \quad \phi(s)\rightarrow \left\{\begin{array}{l} 1, \quad s\rightarrow\infty, \\ 0, \quad s\rightarrow-\infty, \end{array}\right. \] and \(Z\) is affine in its second component \[ Z(z,p)=Z_+(z)p+Z_-(z)(1-p). \] The system is changed into piecewise smooth system as \(\varepsilon\rightarrow0\). The authors used the slow divergence-integral based upon integration along a generalized canard cycle for a piecewise smooth two-fold bifurcation to prove that there exists polynomial vector-fields \(Z_{\pm}\)(\(Z_+(\cdot,\lambda)\) is a quadratic vector field and \( Z_-(\cdot,\lambda)\) a linear vector field, both depending smoothly on a parameter \(\lambda\in\mathbb{R}\)) such that the number of limit cycles of \(Z\) is unbounded. They illustrated that the unboundedness of limit cycles depends on the regularization rather than the vector fields \(Z_{\pm}\). The result is interesting.