Subharmonic solutions for second order differential equations (Q1310495)

The authors consider the second order \(T\)-periodic differential system \(x''+\nabla G(t,x(t))= 0\) and they are interested in establishing existence results for \(\kappa T\) periodic solutions which are not \(T\)- periodic. The approach used is the following. Under some regularity assumptions the set of \(\kappa T\)-periodic solutions coincide with the set of critical points of the functional \(\phi_ k(x)= \int_ 0^{\kappa T}\Bigl({| x'(t)|^ 2\over 2}- G(t,x(t))\Bigr)dt\). In Section 2 the authors prove some general existence results for \(\kappa T\) periodic solutions (Theorems 1 and 2) based on estimates of the Morse index at critical levels of the above functional. In Section 3 the authors show how the general abstract assumptions are satisfied in many different situations. They are concerned mainly with the convex subquadratic case but their results can be applied also when these two assumptions are not satisfied, as it is shown by some examples which are studied.