Non-collision periodic solutions of forced dynamical systems with weak singularities (Q1884243)

The paper deals with forced Lagrangian systems (1) \(-u''+\text{grad}\,V(u)=p(t)\) resp (2) \(u''+\text{grad}\,V(u)=p(t)\), where \(p(t)\) is a continuous \(T\)-periodic \(n\)-vector function, and the potential \(V\) satisfies some singularity conditions at zero and infinity, for instance: (3) \(V(u)=|u|^{-\alpha}+ 1/2k^2 |u|^2\) with \(\alpha,k\) positive. The author aims at conditions that guarantee the existence of a \(T\)-periodic solution \(u(t)\neq 0\). A well-known fixed-point theorem by Krasnoselskii is used to prove results on the existence of such solutions. Applying these to the particular potential (3) yields the following statement: System (1) resp (2) has a \(T\)-periodic solution for any \(k>0\) resp \(k<\pi T^{-1}\) if there exists a constant positive vector \(v\) such that the scalar product \((v,p(t))\) does not change sign. Moreover, it is shown that the singularity of \(V\) at the origin may be even weaker than any negative power of \(|u|\). Finally, the presented results are compared with recent ones by P. Majer and S. Solimini, which had been deduced by variational methods.