Periodic solutions for nonlinear differential systems: the second order bifurcation function

Abstract

We are concerned here with the classical problem of Poincaré of persistence of periodic solutions under small perturbations. The main contribution of this work is to give the expression of the second order bifurcation function in more general hypotheses than the ones already existing in the literature. We illustrate our main result constructing a second order bifurcation function for the perturbed symmetric Euler top.