Measuring the criticality of a Hopf bifurcation

This work is based on the observation that the first Poincaré–Lyapunov constant is a quadratic function of the coefficients of the two-dimensional vector field at a Hopf bifurcation. From a given parameter point, we find the distance to the “Hopf quadric.” This distance provides a measure of the criticality of the Hopf bifurcation. The viability of the approach is demonstrated through numerical examples.