Configurations of limit cycles in Liénard equations (Q2637799)

The main result of the paper is formulated as follows: every finite configuration of \(n\) disjoint simple closed curves in the plane can be topologically realized as the set of limit cycles of a polynomial Liénard system \[ \dot{x}=y-F(x), \quad \dot{y}=\varepsilon g(x) \] under the conditions that \(\varepsilon > 0\) is a small parameter, the polynomials \(F(x)\) and \(g(x)\) have degrees \(2n+1\) and \(2r-1\) correspondingly, where \(r \leq n\). The related vector field \(X\) is Morse-Smale which has the minimum number of singularities required for realizing the configuration in a Liénard system. The authors provide an explicit upper bound on the degree of \(X\), which is lower than the results obtained before in the context of general polynomial vector fields.