Oscillation of solutions of arbitrary order functional differential equations (Q917770)

Functional differential equations of the type \[ (1)\quad x^{(n)}(t)+\sigma \sum^{m}_{i=1}p_ i(t)x(g_ i(t))+\delta q(t)x(h(t))=f(t) \] are investigated. Here, \(\sigma\), \(\delta\) are equal to \(\pm 1\) or 0, \(g_ i(t)\leq t\) are retarded arguments, and \(h(t)>t\) is an advanced argument. Under some special conditions on f, \(p_ i\), \(g_ i\), h, q not to be described here, several theorems are proved asserting that equation (1) is almost oscillatory: this means that every solution x(t) of (1) is either ocillatory or else satisfies \(\lim_{t\to \infty}x^{(i)}(t)=0\) for \(i=0,...,n-1\), or \(\lim_{t\to \infty}| x^{(i)}(t)| =\infty\) for \(i=0,...,n-1\). Three rather artificial examples are presented, too, but in general, it seems hard to verify some of the sufficient conditions imposed on (1). The proofs are lengthy but elementary.