Existence of periodic and subharmonic solutions for second-order \(p\)-Laplacian difference equations (Q2472244)

Consider the nonlinear second order difference equation \[ \Delta (\varphi _{p}(\Delta x_{n-1})+f(n,x_{n+1},x_{n},x_{n-1})=0,\quad n\in \mathbb Z,\tag{\(*\)} \] where \(\Delta\) is the forward difference operator \(\Delta x_{n}=x_{n+1}-x_{n}\), \(\Delta ^{2}x_{n}=\Delta (\Delta x_{n})\), \(\varphi _{p}(s)\) is the \(p\)-Laplacian operator \(\varphi _{p}(s)=\left| s\right| ^{p-2}s~(1<p<\infty ),\) and \(f:\mathbb Z\times \mathbb R^{3}\rightarrow \mathbb R\) is a continuous functional in the second, the third, and the fourth variables and satisfies \(f(t+m,u,v,w)=f(t,u,v,w)\) for a given positive integer \(m\). The author obtains a sufficient condition for the existence of periodic and subharmonic solutions of (\(*\)) using critical point theory.