Canonical Discontinuous Planar Piecewise Linear Systems

The family of Filippov systems constituted by planar discontinuous piecewise linear systems with two half-plane linearity zones is considered. Under generic conditions that amount to the boundedness of the sliding set, some changes of variables and parameters are used to obtain a Lienard-like canonical form with seven parameters. This canonical form is topologically equivalent to the original system if one restricts one's attention to orbits with no points in the sliding set. Under the assumption of focus-focus dynamics, a reduced canonical form with only five parameters is obtained. For the case without equilibria in both open half-planes we describe the qualitatively different phase portraits that can occur in the parameter space and the bifurcations connecting them. In particular, we show the possible existence of two limit cycles surrounding the sliding set. Such limit cycles bifurcate at certain parameter curves, organized around different codimension-two Hopf bifurcation points. The proposed canonical form will be a useful tool in the systematic study of planar discontinuous piecewise linear systems, in which this paper is a first step.