The hyperelliptic limit cycles of the Liénard systems

AbstractFor Liénard systems x˙=y, y˙=−fm(x)y−gn(x) with fm and gn real polynomials of degree m and n respectively, in [H. Zoladek, Algebraic invariant curves for the Liénard equation, Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 350 (1998) 1681–1701] the author showed that if m⩾3 and m+1<n<2m there always exist Liénard systems which have a hyperelliptic limit cycle. Llibre and Zhang [J. Llibre, Xiang Zhang, On the algebraic limit cycles of Liénard systems, Nonlinearity 21 (2008) 2011–2022] proved that the Liénard systems with m=3 and n=5 have no hyperelliptic limit cycles and that there exist Liénard systems with m=4 and 5<n<8 which do have hyperelliptic limit cycles. So, it is still an open problem to characterize the Liénard systems which have an algebraic limit cycle in cases m>4 and m+1<n<2m. In this paper we will prove that there exist Liénard systems with m=5 and m+1<n