Limit Cycle Bifurcations in Near-Hamiltonian Systems by Perturbing a Nilpotent Center

As we know, Hopf bifurcation is an important part of bifurcation theory of dynamical systems. Almost all known works are concerned with the bifurcation and number of limit cycles near a nondegenerate focus or center. In the present paper, we study a general near-Hamiltonian system on the plane whose unperturbed system has a nilpotent center. We obtain an expansion for the first order Melnikov function near the center together with a computing method for the first coefficients. Using these coefficients, we obtain a new bifurcation theorem concerning the limit cycle bifurcation near the nilpotent center. An interesting application example & a cubic system having five limit cycles & is also presented.