Oscillation criteria for forced functional differential equations with deviating arguments (Q2644833)

The author considers the functional differential equation \((1)\quad L_ nx(t)+q(t)f[x(g(t))]=e(t),\) where n is even, \(L_ 0x(t)=x(t)\), \(L_ kx(t)=(1/a_ k(t))(d/dt)L_{k-1}x(t)\), \(0\leq k\leq n\), \(a_ n=1\), \(a_ i: [\alpha_ 0,\infty)\to (0,\infty)\), \(\int^{\infty}a_ i(s)ds=\infty\), \(1\leq i\leq n-1\), q,e,g: [\(\alpha\) \({}_ 0,\infty)\to {\mathbb{R}}=(-\infty,\infty)\), f: \({\mathbb{R}}\to {\mathbb{R}}\) are continuous, \(\alpha_ 0>0\), q(t)\(\geq 0\) and not identically zero on any ray of the form \([t^*,\infty)\) for some \(t^*\geq \alpha_ 0\), \(xf(x)>0\) for \(x\neq 0\), \(\lim_{t\to \infty}g(t)=\infty\); there exist continuous functions \(\eta\),\(\sigma\) : [\(\alpha\) \({}_ 0,\infty)\to {\mathbb{R}}\) such that \(\alpha_ 0\leq \sigma (t)\leq \min \{t,g(t)\}\), \(\lim_{t\to \infty}\sigma (t)=\infty\), \(\eta\) (t) is oscillatory, \(L_ n\eta (t)=e(t)\), \(\eta\) (t)\(\to 0\) as \(t\to \infty\). The domain of \(L_ n\), \({\mathcal D}(L_ n)\), is defined to be the set of all functions x: [\(\alpha\) \({}_ 0,\infty)\to {\mathbb{R}}\) such that \(L_ jx(t)\), \(j=0,1,...,n\), exist and are continuous on \([\alpha_ 0,\infty)\). It is assumed that (1) does possess such solutions \(x\in {\mathcal D}(L_ n)\) that sup\(\{| x(t)|:\) \(t\geq T\}>0\) for any \(T\geq \alpha_ 0\) and f is locally of bounded variation. The author gives some new oscillation criteria for (1) which extend and unify some known oscillation criteria for ordinary differential equations as well as functional differential equations with deviating arguments. All results are illustrated by examples.