A method for characterizing nilpotent centers

To characterize when a nilpotent singular point of an analytic differential system is a center is of particular interest, first for the problem of distinguishing between a focus and a center, and after for studying the bifurcation of limit cycles from it or from its period annulus. We give an effective algorithm in the search of necessary conditions for detecting nilpotent centers based in recent developments. Moreover we survey the last results on this problem and illustrate our approach by means of examples.The first author is partially supported by a MINECO/ FEDER grant number MTM2011-22877 and an AGAUR (Generalitat de Catalunya) grant number 2009SGR 381. The second author is partially supported by a MINECO/ FEDER grant number MTM2008-03437, an AGAUR grant number 2009SGR 410, ICREA Academia and two FP7-PEOPLE-2012-IRSES numbers 316338 and 318999