Existence and uniqueness for higher order periodic boundary value problems under spectral separation conditions (Q2506400)

The \(n\)th-order periodic boundary value problem \[ L_nu(t)=f(t,u(t)),\; 0\leq t\leq 2\pi, \quad u^{(j)}(0)=u^{(j)}(2\pi), j=0,1,\dots,n-1, \] is studied where \[ L_nu(t)=u^{(n)}(t)+ \sum_{j=0}^{n-1}a_ju^{(j)}(t),\quad a_j\in {\mathbb R},\;j=0,1,\dots,n-1,\;n\geq 1 \] and \[ f: [0,2\pi]\times {\mathbb R} \to {\mathbb R} \] is continuous. The author proves existence and uniqueness of the solution to this problem by assuming that the spectrum of operator \(L_n\) does not intersect a suitable closed circle. Such result is applied to the particular cases in which the derivatives that appear in the expression of \(L_n\) are only even or only odd. These results generalize previous ones given in the literature. Moreover, by defining \(P_n(\lambda) = \lambda^n+\displaystyle \sum_{j=0}^{n-1}a_j\, \lambda^j\) and by considering \(i\) as the imaginary unit, it is proven that the spectrum of the operator \(L_n\) on the space \(\{u \in W^{n,2}(I); \;u^{(j)}(0)=u^{(j)}(2\pi), j=0,1,\dots,n-1\}\) is given by the set \(\{P_n(k \, i); \quad k \in {\mathbb Z}\}\) and it consists only of eigenvalues.