The cyclicity of period annuli of a class of quadratic reversible systems with two centers (Q414811)

The paper deals with the limit cycles of a planar quadratic time-reversible system with two centers, bifurcating under small quadratic perturbations. Except for one case which was already studied, a reversible system can be written as \[ \begin{aligned} \dot{x}&=-y+ax^2+by^2,\\ \dot{y}&=x(1-2y).\end{aligned}\tag{1} \] So far, no general results are known about the limit cycles under small perturbation of (1) when the parameters \(a\), \(b\) belong to some open set in \(\mathbb{R}^{2}\). Only particular results have been proved for some fixed values of \(a\) and variable \(b\). For most of them, the phase curves of (1) are conic or elliptic. Here, the author deals with the case when \(a=-\frac32\), \(b\in(0,2)\). Then system (1) can be transformed to a system having a first integral \[ H(x,y)=|y|^{-\frac32}[x^2+2by^2+4(b-1)y-{\textstyle \frac23}(b-2)] \] and the phase curves \(H(x,y^2)=h\) are clearly elliptic. Even in the elliptic case, the problem of the number of bifurcating limit cycles reduces to a rather difficult problem to find a bound on the zeros of some complete elliptic integral \(I(h)\) depending on parameters. This is the so called ``abelian integrals method'' to study the weakened 16th Hilbert's problem. It contains a derivation of Picard-Fuchs equations, complexification and usage of the argument principle, local calculations at the values of \(h\) corresponding to a center and the separatrix contour (on the Poincaré sphere) which determine the corresponding annulus of periodic trajectories. Together, the geometry of some special planar curves parametrized by \(h\) and determined by ratios of elliptic integrals is crucial in the proofs. The author is able to apply all these tools in proving his main results. Namely, if \(b\in(\frac12,\frac32)\), then the cyclicity of each period annulus is two and the total cyclicity of two period annuli is three. If \(b\in(0,\frac12)\cup(\frac32,2)\), then one of the annuli has cyclicity one and the other has cyclicity three. The total cyclicity is four. All these bounds are exact. To prove them, the author first studies the zeros of the function \(I(h)-hI'(h)\).