An Algorithm for Symbolic Computation of Hopf Bifurcation

The Hopf bifurcation has become a widely used method in the study of periodic oscillations of nonlinear dynamical systems. The purpose of this paper is not to carry out a direct symbolic algebraic manipulation of formulae characterizing this bifurcation (direction, stability and amplitudes of bifurcating periodic orbits, ...). It is planned to develop a recursive algorithm well suited to symbolic computation implementation, which is based upon the normal form approach and supplies the necessary information to characterize generalized Hopf bifurcations.