Homoclinic solutions for \(p(t)\)-Laplacian-Hamiltonian systems without coercive conditions (Q305809)

The authors are concerned with the existence and multiplicity of homoclinic solutions for the following second-order \(p(t)\)-Laplacian Hamiltonian system \[ \frac{d}{dt}\Big(\left|\dot{u}(t)\right|^{p(t)-2}\dot{u}(t)\Big)-a(t)\left|u(t)\right|^{p(t)-2}u(t)+\nabla W(t,u(t))=0, \eqno(1) \] where \(t\in\mathbb{R}\), \(u\in\mathbb{R}^{n}\), \(p\in C(\mathbb{R},\mathbb{R})\), \(a\in C(\mathbb{R},\mathbb{R})\), \(W\in C^{1}(\mathbb{R}\times\mathbb{R}^{n},\mathbb{R})\) and \(\nabla W(t,u)\) is the gradient of \(W(t,u)\) in \(u\). Assuming that there exist two constants \(r_{1}\), \(r_{2}\) such that \(0<r_{1}\leq a(t)\leq r_{2}<\infty\) for all \(t\in\mathbb{R}\) and the growth \(p(t)\) satisfies \(1\leq\inf_{t\in\mathbb{R}}p(t)\leq \sup_{t\in\mathbb{R}}p(t)<\infty\), they prove the existence and multiplicity of homoclinic solutions for (1) when \(W(t,u)\) is respectively of super-\(p(t)\) growth or sub-\(p(t)\) growth as \(\left|u\right|\longrightarrow\infty\). For the proofs, they apply the minimax methods in critical point theory to the least action integral.