Periodic orbits from second order perturbation via rational trigonometric integrals

The second order Poincaré-Pontryagin-Melnikov perturbation theory is used in this paper to study the number of bifurcated periodic orbits from certain centers. This approach also allows us to give the shape and the period up to the first order. We address these problems for some classes of Abel differential equations and quadratic isochronous vector fields in the plane. We prove that two is the maximum number of hyperbolic periodic orbits bifurcating from the isochronous quadratic centers with a birational linearization under quadratic perturbations of second order. In particular the configurations (2,0) and (1,1) are realizable when two centers are perturbed simultaneously. The required computations show that all the considered families share the same iterated rational trigonometric integrals. © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.