Existence and uniqueness of limit cycles in a class of second order ODE's with inseparable mixed terms (Q621551)

The author studies the problem of uniqueness of a limit cycle for the second order ODE \[ \ddot x+\dot x \phi(x,\dot x)+g(x)=0. \] Let \(G(x)=\int_0^x g(s) \,ds\) and \(\text{sign}(x) \) be the sign function. The following statement is the main result of the paper. Theorem. Assume \(g\in C^1(\mathbb{R},\mathbb{R})\) with \(g'(0)>0\) and \(x g(x)>0\) for \(x\neq 0\). Let \(\phi(x,y)\in C^1(\mathbb{R}^2,\mathbb{R})\) satisfy \[ \frac{\text{sign}(x)\sqrt{2 G(x)} }{g(x)} \left[ 2 G(x) \frac{\phi_x(x,y) g(x) -\phi(x,y) g'(x) }{g(x)^2}+\phi(x,y) \right] +y\phi_y\neq 0, \] for all \((x,y)\in \mathbb{R}^2\setminus \{0\}\). Then the system \[ \dot x=y, \;\;\dot y=-g(x)-y \phi(x,y)\tag{1} \] has at most one limit cycle, which is hyperbolic. It is also proved that, under some additional assumptions, system (1) has exactly one limit cycle, which attracts every non-constant solution.