A necessary and sufficient condition for the oscillation of neutral equation (Q1105763)

The result of this paper is related to results of Y. G. Sficas and I. P. Stravroulakis that will appear in J. Math. Anal. It is contained in the following theorem. Consider the neutral difference differential equation \[ (1)\quad \frac{d}{dt}[y(t)+py(t-\tau)]+qy(t-\sigma)=0\quad for\quad t\geq t_ 0, \] where p,q,\(\tau\) and \(\sigma\) are real numbers. Then a necessary and sufficient condition for all solutions of equation (1) to oscillate is that the characteristic equations \(\lambda +p\lambda e^{- \lambda \tau}+qe^{-\lambda \sigma}=0\) have no real roots.