Cyclicity of some symmetric nilpotent centers (Q907803)

The paper treats analytic planar vector fields \(V\) for which the origin is a nilpotent equilibrium. Assuming that \(V\) is an infinite series of certain quasihomogeneous polynomial vector fields, the author proves monodromy and symmetry, and establishes conditions on V such that the origin becomes a center. Earlier results yield the existence of a Lyapunov function whose coefficients are the so-called focus quantities. These are polynomials in the parameters of \(V\) and generate the Bautin ideal \(B\) of \(V\). It is shown that \(B\) is equivalently generated by the so-called Poincare-Lyapunov quantities which are defined by means of the first return map. \(B\) is finitely generated, and the origin is a center of \(V\) if and only if the parameters of \(V\) belong to the variety of common zeros of \(B\). If \(B\) has a minimal basis of r elements, then the cyclicity of any center at the origin is at most \(r-1\), i.e., at most \(r-1\) limit cycles can bifurcate from the origin under small perturbations of the parameters. In the second part of the paper, the author presents three interesting examples and constructs in each case a minimal basis of \(B\). Here, routines of computational algebra and some results from ideal theory are used to obtain the desired statements. For instance, the third example is a polynomial vector field of degree 5 with 9 parametric coefficients and a possible nilpotent center at the origin. It is proved that its cyclicity is at most 10, and there exist perturbations with 7 bifurcating limit cycles.