Bifurcation of 2-periodic orbits from non-hyperbolic fixed points

Abstract

We introduce the concept of 2-cyclicity for families of one-dimensional maps with a non-hyperbolic fixed point by analogy to the cyclicity for families of planar vector fields with a weak focus. This new concept is useful in order to study the number of 2-periodic orbits that can bifurcate from the fixed point. As an application we study the 2-cyclicity of some natural families of polynomial maps.