Quartic Liénard equations with linear damping (Q2274334)

This paper studies the limit cycles for the quadratic Lienard equation with linear damping \[ \begin{cases} \dot{x}=y,\\ \dot{y}=-(a_0+x)\,y-(b_0+b_1 x+b_2 x^2 +b_3 x^3+x^4), \end{cases}\tag{1} \] when \((a_0,b_0,b_1,b_2,b_3)\) is in small neighborhood of \((0,0,0,0,0)\). The author proves that there exists a small neighborhood \(V\) of the origin in the parameter space \((a_0,b_0,b_1,b_2,b_3)\) such that the system (1) has at most two limit cycles for each \((a_0,b_0,b_1,b_2,b_3)\in V\). Also it is studied the perturbed system \[ \begin{cases} \dot{x}=y,\\ \dot{y}=-(a_0+x)\,y-\varepsilon\,(b_0+b_1 x+b_2 x^2 +b_3 x^3+x^4) \end{cases}\tag{2} \] and it is proved that there exist a small \(\varepsilon_0>0\) and a small neighborhood \(V\) of \((0,0,0,0,0)\) such that the system (2) has at most two limit sycles for each \((\varepsilon,a_0,b_0,b_1,b_2,b_3)\in [0,\varepsilon_0]\times V\).