An estimate of the number of limit cycles bifurcating from a planar integrable system (Q2123435)

The authors investigate the number of bifurcating limit cycles for a class of planar piecewise integrable systems with a center at the origin: \[ \left( \begin{array}{c} \dot{x} \\ \dot{y} \end{array} \right) = \begin{cases} \left( \begin{array}{c} -y(1+by)^m+\varepsilon f^+(x, y) \\ x(1+by)^m+\varepsilon g^+(x, y) \end{array} \right), & \text{if } x> 0, \\ \\ \left( \begin{array}{c} -y(1+ay)^m+\varepsilon f^-(x, y) \\ x(1+ay)^m+\varepsilon g^-(x, y) \end{array} \right), & \text{if } x\leq 0, \end{cases} \] where \(f^{\pm}(x, y)\) and \(g^{\pm}(x, y)\) are polynomials of degree \(n\), \(m\) and \(n\) are positive integers with \(m\geq 2\), \(|\varepsilon|>0\) is sufficiently small. Clearly the unperturbed system, i.e., with \(\varepsilon=0\), has a first integral of the form \(H(x, y)=\frac{1}{2}(x^2+y^2)\) and the origin is a center, around which there is a period annulus \(\mathcal{A}\). By using the first-order averaging method for piecewise smooth systems, the authors present an estimate of the limit cycles bifurcating from the period annulus \(\mathcal{A}\) for \(|\varepsilon|>0\) sufficiently small.