Existence results of multiple solutions for a \(2n\)th-order finite difference equation (Q1988597)

This paper investigates the existence of multiple solutions for a \(2n\)th-order finite difference equation using a variational approach. As the authors point out, the algebraic conditions that are imposed on the nonlinear term are more general than the symmetric conditions at zero and infinity. In addition, the result about existence of at least two nonzero solutions is new. Inspired by some previous works on difference equations, the authors focus on the following \(2n\)th-order finite difference equation with the periodic boundary conditions \[ \begin{cases} \sum_{i=1}^{n}(-1)^{n}\Delta^{i}\left(\alpha_{i}(t)\Delta^{i}x(t-i)\right)&=\mu f(t, x(t)), \quad t\in [1, N]_{\mathbb{Z}},\\ \Delta^{j}x(1-n)&=\Delta^{j}x(N+1-n), \quad j=0, 1, 2, \dots, 2n+1, \end{cases} \] where \(\Delta x(t) = x(t + 1) - x(t)\), \(\Delta^{i} x(t) = \Delta^{i-1} ( \Delta x(t))\) for \(i \geq 2\), the interval \([1, N ]_{\mathbb{Z}}\) denotes the discrete interval of \({1, 2, \dots, N - 1, N }\), \(\alpha_{i} (N + k) = \alpha_{i} (k)\) for both \(k = 1, 2, \dots, n\) and \(i = 1, 2, \dots , n\), \(\alpha_{0} (t) > 0\) and \(\alpha_{i} (t) \geq 0\) for both \(i = 1, 2, \dots, n\) and \(t \in [1, N]_{\mathbb{Z}}\), \(\mu\) is a positive parameter, and \(f \colon [1, N ]_{\mathbb{Z}} \times \mathbb{R}\to \mathbb{R}\) is continuous. In the second section of the paper, the variational structure of the above problem and some preparatory knowledge are provided. In Section~3, existence results of multiple solutions for the above problem are established, and examples are given to illustrate the main results.