Multiple solutions for strongly resonant periodic systems (Q2371180)

This interesting paper is mainly concerned with two tasks: the first one is to conduct a detailed analysis of the Cerami compactness conditions and the other one is to apply a second deformation theorem to investigate the multiplicity of solutions for a periodic strongly resonant system. In the careful analysis of the Cerami compactness condition, there appears a comparison with the Palais-Smale compactness conditions, it is proved when these two conditions coincide and it is shown that in a Banach space a \(C^1\) functional which is bounded below and satisfies the Cerami compactness condition is weakly coercive. In the second part of the paper the system \[ -x''(t) -A(t) x(t) =\nabla F(t,x(t))\text{ a.e. on }[ 0,b],\quad x(0) =x(b), \] \[ x'(0) =x'(b) \] is considered, where \(A(t)\) belongs to the group of symmetric \( N\times N\) matrices; \(F:\mathbb R\times \mathbb R^{N}\to R\) is measurable in \(t\) and \(C^{1}\) in \(x\). Under the assumption that the differential operator \(x\to -x''-Ax\) has no negative eigenvalues, has a nontrivial kernel and satisfies a strong resonance condition with respect to the zero eigenvalue. Some further mild assumptions on \(F\) are also imposed which allow for example to show that the Euler action functional is coercive and satisfies the Palais-Smale condition at a certain level \(c\). Next a second deformation theorem is applied to obtain the existence multiplicity result.