On the new variational principles and duality for periodic solutions of Lagrange equations with superlinear nonlinearities (Q5956510)

The authors consider the Euler-Lagrange equation \[ {d\over dt} L_{x'}(t,x'(t))+V_x(t,x(t))=0\quad \text{a.e. in} \mathbb{R}, \tag{1} \] where \(T>0\) is arbitrary, \(L, V: \mathbb{R}\times \mathbb{R}^n \rightarrow \mathbb{R}\) are convex, Gateaux differentiable in the second variable, \(T-\)periodic and measurable functions it \(t\). Here, the existence of periodic solutions to (1) is proved, where a periodic solution to (1) is understood as a pair \((x,p)\) of \(T-\)periodic absolutely continuous functions such that \[ {d\over dt} p(t)+ V_x(t,x(t))=0, \quad p(t)=L_{x'}(t,x'(t)). \] The authors look for critical points of the ``minmax'' type of the functional \[ J(x) = \int^T_0 (-V(t,x(t))+L(t,x'(t))) dt \] which is superlinear and defined on the space of absolutely continuous \(T-\)periodic functions \(x: \mathbb{R}\rightarrow \mathbb{R}^n\). The study of (1) is based on duality methods analogous to the methods developed for (1) in sublinear cases. The duality results proved here yield a measure of a duality gap between corresponding functionals for approximate solutions to (1), which has been proved before for the sublinear case, only.