On an inequality of Lyapunov for disfocality (Q914924): Difference between revisions

The Lyapunov inequality states that if y(\(\cdot)\) is a nontrivial solution of \((1)\quad y''(t)+q(y)y(t)=0\) on an interval containing the points a and b \((a<b)\) which is such that \(y(a)=y(b)=0\) then \(\int^{b}_{a}| q(t)| dt>4/(b-a).\) The author proves the following result. Theorem. Let \(\gamma\) (\(\cdot)\) denote a function with the properties (i) \(\gamma (0)=0\), (ii) \(\gamma\) (\(\cdot)\) is differentiable on [0,c]. Set \(Q(t):=q(t)-\gamma (t)+\gamma (t)^ 2\) and \[ A(c):=\sup_{0\leq x\leq c}| \int^{x}_{0}\exp \{2\int^{x}_{t}\gamma (s)ds\}Q(t)dt|, \] \[ B(c):=\sup_{0\leq x\leq c}\int^{x}_{0}\exp \{2\int^{x}_{5}\gamma (s)ds\}dt. \] If \(4A(c)B(c)<1\) then (1) is right disfocal on [0,c).