Relaxation Oscillation and Canard Explosion

We give a geometric analysis of relaxation oscillations and canard cycles in singularly perturbed planar vector fields. The transition from small Hopf-type cycles to large relaxation cycles, which occurs in an exponentially thin parameter interval, is described as a perturbation of a family of singular cycles. The results are obtained by means of two blow-up transformations combined with standard tools of dynamical systems theory. The efficient use of various charts is emphasized. The results are applied to the van der Pol equation.