Existence of periodic solutions of fourth-order nonlinear difference equations (Q740726)

This paper is concerned with the existence of periodic solutions of a class of fourth-order nonlinear difference equations of the form \[ \Delta ^{2}\left( r_{n-2}\Delta ^{2}u_{n-2}\right) =f\left(n,u_{n+1},u_{n},u_{n-1}\right) ,\text{ }n\in Z=\left\{\dots,-2,-1,0,1,2,\dots\right\} , \tag{1} \] where \(\Delta \) is the forward difference, \(\left\{ r_{n}\right\} \) is a positive \(T\)-periodic sequence, \(f=f(n,v_{1},v_{2},v_{3})\) is a continuous function which is \(T\)-periodic in \(n\). By means of the assumption that \[ f(n,v_{1},v_{2},v_{3})=\frac{\partial F(n-1,v_{2},v_{3})}{\partial v_{2}}+\frac{\partial F(n,v_{1},v_{2})}{\partial v_{2}} \] for some continuous \(F=F(n,v_{1},v_{2})\) which is also \(T\)-periodic in \(n\), the authors are able to transform the existence of periodic solutions of the above equation into the existence of critical points of functionals defined on finite-dimensional spaces. Then imposing various additional conditions, the saddle point theorem can be applied to derive critical points, and hence \(mT\)-periodic solutions of the original equation. Similar techniques have been carried out for many different types of nonlinear difference equations, and hence the explicit existence statements in this paper are not repeated here.