Eventual disconjugacy of self-adjoint difference equations (Q1963123)

The author studies the eventual disconjugacy of the second-order self-adjoint difference equation \[ \Delta (c_{n}\Delta y_{n})+ (a_{n}+f_{n})y_{n+1}=0, \;\;n\geq 0, \] where \(c_{n}\neq 0\) and is not assumed to be positive. This equation is considered as a perturbation of the eventually disconjugate equation \[ \Delta (c_{n}\Delta \xi_{n})+ a_{n}\xi_{n+1}=0, \;\;n\geq 0. \] It is shown that the change of variable \(y_{n}=\xi_{n} x_{n}\), where \(\xi_{n}\) is a principal solution of the unperturbed equation, reduces the problem of the eventual disconjugacy of the perturbed equation to the problem of nonoscillation of the self-adjoint difference equation \[ \Delta (r_{n}\Delta x_{n})+ p_{n}x_{n+1}=0, \;\;n\geq 0, \] with \(r_{n}=c_{n}\xi_{n}\xi_{n+1}\), \(p_{n}=f_{n}\xi^{2}_{n+1}\) and \(r_{n}>0\) for all sufficiently large \(n\). Using a weighted averaging method the nonoscillation property is characterized in terms of the existence of solutions to a Riccati difference equation. An analogon to Willett's theorem for the corresponding differential equations is proved and a necessary and sufficient condition for eventual disconjugacy in terms of a convergent sequence of averaged sums of \(f_{n}\) is obtained.