Homoclinic solutions for a differential inclusion system involving the \(p(t)\)-Laplacian (Q2081373)

In this paper, the authors consider the following nonlinear second order \(p(t)\)-Laplacian system with nonsmooth potential \[ \left\{ \begin{array}{l} \frac{d}{dt}\big(\left|\dot{u}(t)\right|^{p(t)-2}\dot{u}(t)\big)-a(t)\left|u(t)\right|^{p(t)-2}u(t)\in\partial f(t,u(t))\\ u(t)\longrightarrow 0\ as\ \left|t\right|\longrightarrow\infty \end{array}\right.\tag{1} \] where \(p,a:\mathbb{R}\longrightarrow\mathbb{R}^{+}\), \(f:\mathbb{R}\times\mathbb{R}^{N}\longrightarrow\mathbb{R}\), \(x\longmapsto f(t,x)\) is locally Lipschitz with subdifferential \(\partial f(t,x)\). Using variational methods, they study the existence of homoclinic solutions for (1) under two cases of the nonsmooth potential: periodic and nonperiodic, respectively. For the periodic case, they consider the following auxillary family of periodic problems \[ \left\{ \begin{array}{l} \frac{d}{dt}\big(\left|\dot{u}(t)\right|^{p(t)-2}\dot{u}(t)\big)-a(t)\left|u(t)\right|^{p(t)-2}u(t)\in\partial f(t,u(t))\\ u(-nb)=u(nb),\ \dot{u}(-nb)=\dot{u}(nb). \end{array}\right. \tag{2} \] Under some suitable conditions on \(a,p,f\), they prove that the problems (2) have a sequence \((u_{n})\) of solutions and up to a subsequence, they establish that \(u_{n}\longrightarrow u\) in \(C_{\mathrm{loc}}(\mathbb{R},\mathbb{R}^{N})\) which is a solution of problem (1). However, for the nonperiodic case, they study the energy functional associated to problem (1) to establish the existence of solutions for (1).