Behavior at infinity of a solution to a differential-difference equation (Q1935750)

This paper is concerned with a differential-difference equation of the form \[ \sum_{j=0}^{m}\int_{0}^{h}z^{(j)}(t-u)\mu_{j}(du)=f(t), \enskip t>0, \tag{*} \] where \(z=z(t)\) is the unknown function, \(h>0\), \(\mu_{j}\), \(j=0,\dotsc ,m\), are finite complex-valued measures on \([0,h]\) and the function \(f\) is such that \(\int_{0}^{\infty}e^{\gamma t}|f(t)|\,dt <\infty\) for some \(\gamma \in \mathbb{R}\). Also, the unknown function \(z=z(t)\) implies the initial condition \(z(t)=g(t)\), \(t\in [-h,0]\), where \(g=g(t)\) is an appropriate function. The aim in the paper is to study the asymptotic behavior of the solution \(z=z(t)\) for \(t\to \infty\). More precisely the expansion \[ z(t)=\sum_{j=1}^{l} P_{j}(t)e^{-s_{j}t}+r(t) \] is established, where \(s_j\), \(j=1,\dotsc ,l\), are the roots of the characteristic equation of \((*)\), \(P_{j} (t)\), \(j=1,\dotsc ,l\) are the uniquely defined polynomials of degrees less than the multiplicities of the corresponding roots \(s_{j}\) and \(r=r(t)\) ``inherits'' the asymptotic properties of the function \(f\) in the following sense: If \(L(f):=\lim_{t\to \infty}f(t)/\sigma (t)\) exists for an appropriate function \(\sigma\), then \(\lim_{t\to \infty} r(t)/\sigma(t)\) exists and is expressible explicitly via \(L(f)\).