On the number of limit cycles which appear by perturbation of two-saddle cycles of planar vector fields

We prove that every heteroclinic saddle loop (a two-saddle cycle) occurring in an analytic finite-parameter family of plane analytic vector fields, may generate no more than a finite number of limit cycles within the family.Comment: 21 pages, 10 figures, a new section explaining the so called "Petrov trick" in the context of the paper is added. The paper will appear in "Functional Analysis and Its Applications" (2013

Quadratic perturbations of quadratic codimension-four centers

We study the stratum in the set of all quadratic differential systems $\dot{x}=P_2(x,y), \dot{y}=Q_2(x,y)$ with a center, known as the codimension-four case $Q_4$. It has a center and a node and a rational first integral. The limit cycles under small quadratic perturbations in the system are determined by the zeros of the first Poincar\'e-Pontryagin-Melnikov integral $I$. We show that the orbits of the unperturbed system are elliptic curves, and $I$ is a complete elliptic integral. Then using Picard-Fuchs equations and the Petrov's method (based on the argument principle), we set an upper bound of eight for the number of limit cycles produced from the period annulus around the center