Lyapunov stability of periodic solutions of Brillouin type equations (Q2338289)

The paper investigates the second-order ordinary differential equation \[ \ddot x = r(t)x^{\alpha} - \varepsilon s(t) x^{\beta}, \] where \(\alpha,\beta\in\mathbb{R}\) and \(r,s\) are continuous \(T\)-periodic functions. Exploiting the third-order approximation and the averaging method, the authors propose some existence results for \(T\)-periodic solutions when \(\varepsilon>0\) is sufficiently small, also analysing their Lyapunov stability. The proposed theorems unify and generalise previous results and, as explained in the last section, they can be applied to the classical Brillouin equation \[ \ddot x + \varepsilon (1+\cos t) x = \frac{1}{x}, \] and also to Rayleigh-Plesset and Gylden-Meshcherskii type equations.