Superquadratic or asymptotically quadratic Hamiltonian systems: ground state homoclinic orbits (Q2350653)

The author considers the following second order Hamiltonian system \[ -\ddot{u}(t)+A(t)u(t)= \nabla W(t,u(t)),\quad t\in \mathbb{R}, \] where \(A(t)\) is a continuous \(T\)-periodic \(N\times N\) symmetric matrix, \(W(t,u) \in \mathcal{C}^1(\mathbb{R}\times \mathbb{R}^{N},\mathbb{R})\) is continuous for each \(u\in \mathbb{R}^{N}\) and \(T\)-periodic in \(t\). The main result of the paper under review states that under some technical assumptions the considered Hamiltonian system has at least one nontrivial ground state homoclinic orbit (Theorem 1.1). The authors illustrate by two examples (\(W(t,u)\) superquadratic, and \(W(t,u)\) asymptotically quadratic) that the assumptions on \(W(t,u)\) are reasonable.