Degenerate Hopf bifurcations in a family of FF-type switching systems (Q493832)

Systems of the form \[ \dot x = \delta x - \beta_{\pm} y + P_{\pm}(\lambda, x, y), \dot y = \beta_{\pm} x + \delta y + Q_{\pm}(\lambda, x, y) \text{ on } \pm y > 0\tag{1} \] are considered, where where \(\beta_{\pm} > 0\), \(\delta \in {\mathbb R}\), and \(P_{\pm}(\lambda, x, y)\) and \(Q_{\pm}(\lambda, x, y)\) are analytic functions in \(x\) and \(y\) which begins with terms of order at least two and which depend on \(\lambda \in {\mathbb R}^n\) in a polynomial fashion. System (1) is viewed as a perturbation of the corresponding system with \(\delta = 0\) and a specified value \(\lambda_0\) of \(\lambda\), for which the upper and lower systems both have a focus or center at the origin. The authors introduce the concept of the fractional order for weak foci, in order to have a common definition of order in the smooth and switching cases, and investigate the relationship between it and the maximum number of limit cycles that can be made to bifurcate from the origin (the cyclicity of the origin). They establish a uniform bound on this number for family (1) in terms of the cardinality of the minimal basis of the ideal generated by the Lyapunov quantities. For the case that \(P\) and \(Q\) are quadratic polynomials in \(x\) and \(y\), they prove that the cyclicity is at least five for foci and at least eight for centers.