Slow divergence integral and its application to classical Liénard equations of degree 5

The slow divergence integral is a crucial tool to study the cyclicity of a slow–fast cycle for singularly perturbed planar vector fields. In this paper, we deduce a useful form for this integral in order to apply it to various problems. As an example, we use it to prove that the slow divergence integral along any non-degenerate slow–fast cycle for singular perturbations of classical Liénard equations of degree 5 has at most one zero, and the zero is simple if it exists; hence the cyclicity of any non-degenerate slow–fast cycle in this class of equations is at most 2. Up to now there were many interesting results about Liénard equations of degree 3, 4 and ≥6, but almost nothing is known about degree 5. The result in this paper can be seen as a first stage to study the uniform property for classical Liénard equations of degree 5.