Limit Cycle Bifurcations by Perturbing a Hamiltonian System with a Cuspidal Loop of Order m

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the expansion of the first-order Melnikov function for general Hamiltonian systems with a cuspidal loop having order m. Some criteria and formulas are derived, which can be used to obtain first-order coefficients in the expansion. In particular, we deduce the first-order coefficients for the case m = 3 and give the corresponding conditions of existing several limit cycles. As an application, we study a Liénard system of type (n, 9) and prove that it can have 14 limit cycles near a cuspidal loop of order 3 for n = 8.