Effectiveness of the Bendixson-Dulac theorem (Q2242550)

The main goal of this paper is to introduce the power and elegance of the Bendixson-Dulac theorem based on the recent advances in this method published mainly in the papers of L. Cherkas, A. Grin, K. Schneider as well in the papers of A. Gasull, H. Giacomini. For example, in some cases a function related with the curvature of the orbits of the vector field can be considered as a Dulac function. Next purpose of the work is to present several families of planar systems for which the recent capabilities of the Bendixson-Dulac approach allows to get, in a fast and elegant way, an upper bound for their number of limit cycles. The authors avoid results based on cumbersome computations. The families under consideration include extensions of Liénard systems and rigid systems. The authors obtain new results and also present simple proofs of some known results. Derived upper bounds can be also sharpened for more particular systems having at most two, one, or no limit cycles. Presented results for Liénard type systems deal with a version of Wilson-Liénard systems which always have an algebraic limit cycle and extend the classical theorem of Massera. Finally, it is applied to recover, in a simple way, known results for rigid cubic systems and for a family containing non-polynomial vector fields.