Homoclinic bifurcations in symmetric unfoldings of a singularity with three-fold zero eigenvalue (Q2577864)

The degenerate singularities and their unfoldings of plane vector fields are well studied. As for singularities in vector fields of dimension more than two much less results have been obtained due to the existence of global bifurcations, such as homoclinic or heteroclinic orbits, and chaotic behavior. The paper studies a singularity at the origin with three-fold zero eigenvalue for symmetric vector fields with nilpotent linear part and 3-jet \(C^{\infty}\)-equivalent to \[ y\,\frac{\partial}{\partial x}+z\,\frac{\partial}{\partial y}+ ax^2y\,\frac{\partial}{\partial z} \] with \(a\neq 0\). Under some conditions, several subfamilies of the symmetric versal unfoldings of this singularity are obtained by using normal form and blow-up methods. The local and global bifurcation behavior is derived. For some subfamilies of the symmetric versal unfoldings of this singularity, the existence of the Sil'nikov homoclinic bifurcation is proved by applying the generalized Mel'nikov methods of a homoclinic orbit to a hyperbolic or nonhyperbolic equilibrium.