Perturbation of a period annulus bounded by a saddle-saddle cycle in a hyperelliptic Hamiltonian systems of degree seven (Q2301841)

The authors study the bifurcation of limit cycles in the perturbed Hamiltonian system of degree seven \[ \dot{x}=y, \;\; \dot{y}=g(x)+\varepsilon (\alpha_0+\alpha_1 x^2+\alpha_2x^4+\alpha_3x^6)y. \] It is assumed that the unperturbed system is symmetric with respect to \(x\) and has a center at the origin together with critical points at \((\pm 1,0)\) and \((\pm\sqrt 2, 0)\) among which one couple of saddles and another one of cusp points. All this means that either \(g(x)=x(x^2-1)(x^2-2)^2\) or \(g(x)=x(x^2-1)^2(x^2-2)\). Both cases have a period annulus around the origin. The second case also has another period annulus surrounding the inner one but the authors did not deal with it. The main result of the paper states that at most 4 limit cycles can bifurcate from the period annulus around the origin and the bound is exact. The proof clearly consists of counting the number of zeros of the line integral over the perturbation in the respective interval of level values. For that, criteria from \textit{M. Grau} et al. [Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 363, No. 1, 109--129 (2011; Zbl 1217.34052)] and \textit{F. Mañosas} and \textit{J. Villadelprat} [J. Differ. Equations 251, No. 6, 1656--1669 (2011; Zbl 1237.34039)] have been used.