On the limit cycles of planar autonomous systems (Q5943617)

Consider a general planar autonomous ordinary differential equation (ODE). This paper presents several results to prove either nonexistence or giving upper bounds on its number of limit cycles. These results do not assume any special structure for the ODE but their hypotheses seem difficult to be verified. Anyway, the authors present several concrete examples of application. Two of the main ideas used in the proofs are: (1) an application of the generalized Bendixson-Dulac criterion for nonsimply connected domains; (2) the existence of a Lyapunov function in a ball and a comparison between the trajectories of the ODE considered and a second ODE, outside this ball. The second ODE is integrable and of the form \(\dot x=P(y),\) \(\dot y=Q(x)\) and it is constructed from the first one.