Nonexistence and existence results for a fourth-order \(p\)-Laplacian discrete mixed boundary value problem (Q2354272)

The paper is devoted to the development of some sufficient conditions for the existence and non-existence of nontrivial solutions of the fourth-order nonlinear \(p\)-Laplacian difference equation \[ \Delta^2\big(\gamma_{n-1}\,\varphi_p(\Delta^2 u_{n-2})\big)=f(n,u_{n+1},u_{n},u_{n-1}),\quad n\in[1,k]\cap\mathbb{Z}, \] satisfying the boundary conditions \[ \Delta u_{-1}=\Delta u_{0}=0,\qquad \Delta u_{k+1}=\Delta u_{k+2}=0, \] where \(k\) is a positive integer, \(\Delta\) means the forward difference operator, \(\gamma_n\) is nonzero and real-valued for all \(n\in[0,k+1]\cap\mathbb{Z}\), \(\varphi_p(s):=|s|^{p-2}s\) is the \(p\)-Laplacian operator with \(1<p<\infty\), and \(f:\mathbb{R}^4\to\mathbb{R}\) is a continuous function. In particular, two sufficient conditions for the existence of at least one solution are given in Theorems 1.1 and 1.2, a sufficient condition for the existence of at least two solutions is given in Theorem 1.3, and a sufficient condition for the nonexistence of a nontrivial solution is given in Theorem 1.4. The proofs are based on the critical point theory and the mountain pass lemma (see Sections 2 and 3). The final section includes three illustrative examples.