Periodic solutions for nonautonomous systems with nonsmooth quadratic or superquadratic potential (Q1769872)

The authors study the second-order periodic system with a nonsmooth potential function \[ -x''(t)-A(t)x(t)\in \partial j(t,x(t)), \quad x(0)=x(b),x'(0)=x'(b), \] where \(b>0\) and \(A\) is a continuous map on \([0,b]\) with values in the space of symmetric \(N\times N\)-matrices, \(j(t,\cdot)\) is a nonsmooth locally Lipschitz function and \(\partial j(t,\cdot)\) stands for its subdifferential in the sense of Clarke. The paper establishes the existence of a solution and complements earlier works on this subject, particularly the paper by \textit{C. L. Tang} and \textit{X.-P. Wu} [J. Math. Anal. Appl. 275, 870--882 (2002; Zbl 1043.34045) and ibid. 285, 8--16 (2003; Zbl 1054.34075)] dealing with subquadratic smooth potential. The potential in the paper under review is quadratic or superquadratic and nonsmooth in general. The approach is variational based on minimax methods, on subdifferential calculus for locally Lipschitz functions and on the nonsmooth critical point theory.