Periodic solutions of perturbed central Hamiltonian systems (Q2330917)

The paper studies periodic solutions of the perturbed Hamiltonian system \[ J \dot u = \nabla_{u} \, H_{\varepsilon} (t,u), \] where \(u=(x,y)\in\mathbb{R}^{2}\times\mathbb{R}^{2}\), \(J\) is the standard symplectic matrix and \[ H_{\varepsilon} (t,x,y) = F_{1}(|x|) + F_{2}(|y|) - \varepsilon V(t,x,y) \] with \(\varepsilon\in\mathbb{R}\) a small parameter. Notice that this class of systems includes the classical Kepler problem. As shown in the introduction, the non-degeneracy conditions required in lots of previous contributions do not hold in the present situation; nevertheless, some symmetry hypotheses introduced by Ambrosetti and Coti Zelati can be exploited. Assuming the perturbing term to be symmetric under a given rotation, the author proves the persistence of circular orbits of the unperturbed problem, producing four subharmonic solutions, two rotating in the counter-clockwise sense and two in the clockwise sense (cf. Theorem 1). The paper ends with an application to planar differential equations of the form \[ \frac{\mathrm{d}}{\mathrm{d}t}\bigl{(} \varphi(\dot x) \bigr{)} + g(|x|) x = \varepsilon \nabla_{x} V(t,x), \] where \(\varphi(w)=F(|w|)w\) is defined on an open ball or on the whole \(\mathbb{R}^{2}\).