Nonoscillation and oscillation of solutions of a class of third order difference equations (Q2644012)

Let the generalized difference operator \(\Delta _{a}\) be defined by \(\Delta _{a}y_{n}=y_{n+1}-ay_{n},a\neq 0.\) Consider the third order nonlinear difference equation \[ \Delta _{a}(p_{n}\Delta _{a}^{2}y_{n})+q_{n}\Delta _{a}^{2}y_{n}=f(n,y_{n},\Delta _{a}y_{n},\Delta _{a}^{2}y_{n})\tag{\(*\)} \] \(n\in \mathbb N,\) where \(\mathbb N\) is the set of natural numbers, \(a\in \mathbb R\backslash \{0\}\), \(\mathbb R\) is the set of real numbers, \(\{p_{n}\}\) and \( \{q_{n}\}\) are real sequences with \(p_{n}\neq 0\) for \(n\in \mathbb N\) and \(f:\mathbb N\times \mathbb R^3\to\mathbb R.\) The authors obtain the following two main results: Theorem 1: Let \(f\) satisfy the following condition: \[ \frac{w+av}{p_{n+1}}[f(n,u,v,w)+(ap_{n}-q_{n})w]\geq 0 \] for \(u,v,w\in \mathbb R,\;a>0\) and \(n\in \mathbb N\). Then all solutions of (\(*\)) are nonoscillatory. {Theorem 2}. Let \(f\) satisfy the following condition: \[ \frac{w+av}{p_{n+1}}[f(n,u,v,w)+(ap_{n}-q_{n})w]\leq 0 \] for \(u,v,w\in \mathbb R,\;a<0\) and \(n\in \mathbb N\). Then all solutions of \((*)\) are oscillatory. Several examples and particular cases are considered.