An oscillation theorem for a class of even order neutral differential equations (Q1856828)

The author considers the even-order neutral differential equation \[ {d^n\over dt^n} [x(t)+ h(t) x(t-\tau)]+ f(t, x(g(t)))= 0,\tag{1} \] where \(\tau> 0\), \(h\in C(\mathbb{R})\), \(g\in C[t_0,\infty) \lim_{t\to\infty} g(t)= \infty\), \(f\in C([t_0, \infty)\times \mathbb{R})\), \(uf(t, u)\geq 0\) for \((t,u)\in [t_0,\infty)\times \mathbb{R}\), and \(f(t,u)\) is nondecreasing in \(u\in\mathbb{R}\) for each fixed \(t\geq t_0\). The main result in the paper is that equation (1) is oscillatory if and only if certain nonneutral differential equation is oscillatory. It generalizes a number of known results. It should be noted also that lemmas 3.1 and 3.2 (proved in section 3), which establish a relation between the functions \(u(t)\) and \(u(t)+ h(t) u(t-\tau)\) with respect to their asymptotic behaviour as \(t\to\infty\), could be very useful in different problems concerning neutral equations.