Unfolding of nilpotent equilibria of degree 4 in Hamiltonian systems with 2 degrees of freedom

Abstract

We consider Hamiltonian systems of two degrees of freedome having a nilpotent equilibrium point with only one eigenvector. We provide the universal unfolding of such equilibrium, provided a non-degeneracy condition holds. We show that the only co-dimension 1 bifurcations that happen in the unfolding are of two types: the normally hyperbolic or elliptic centre-saddle bifurcations and the supercritical Hamiltonian-Hopf bifurcation.