Existence of solutions for a class of nonvariational quasilinear periodic problems (Q1005150)

The authors study the existence of solutions for the nonlinear nonvariational periodic problem with a nonsmooth potential: \[ -(a(t,x(t))x'(t))'\in \partial j(t,x(t)), \text{ for a.a. } t \in T=[0,b], \] \[ x(0)=x(b), \quad x'(0)=x'(b), \] where \(a:T\times \mathbb R\to\mathbb R\) is a continuous function and \(j:T\times \mathbb R\to\mathbb R\) is a measurable potential function which is locally Lipschitz and in general nonsmooth in the \(x\in \mathbb R\) variable. By \(\partial j(t,x)\) they denote the generalized subdifferential of the function \(x \mapsto j(t,x)\). They assume that the map \(x \mapsto a(t,x)\) has a finite limit as \(|x| \to \infty\); then, using the spectrum of the asymptotic differential operator together with degree theoretic methods based on the degree map for multivalued perturbations of \((S)_+\) operators, they prove the existence of a nontrivial smooth solution.