Bifurcation of limit cycles in a quintic system with ten parameters

In this paper, center conditions and bifurcation of limit cycles at the nilpotent critical point in a class of quintic polynomial differential system are investigated. With the help of the computer algebra system MATHEMATICA, the first 11 quasi-Lyapunov constants are deduced. As a result, sufficient and necessary conditions in order to have a center are obtained. The fact that there exist 11 small amplitude limit cycles created from the three-order nilpotent critical point is also proved. Henceforth, we give a lower bound of cyclicity of three-order nilpotent critical point for quintic Lyapunov systems. The results of Jiang et al. (Int. J. Bifurcation Chaos 19:2107–2113, 2009) are improved.