On the oscillation of third-order quasi-linear neutral functional differential equations. (Q2897389)

The authors investigate oscillatory and asymptotic properties of solutions of the third order neutral functional differential equation NEWLINE\[NEWLINE \bigl [a(t)([x(t)+p(t)x(\delta (t))]'')^{\alpha }\bigr ]'+ q(t)x^{\alpha }(\tau (t))=0, \tag{*} NEWLINE\]NEWLINE where \(\alpha \) is the ratio of odd positive integers and the functions appearing in (*) satisfy usual continuity and sign conditions. In addition, it is supposed that the deviated arguments commute, i.e., \(\tau \circ \delta =\delta \circ \tau \). Using a variant of the Riccati technique, various criteria are presented for (*) to have only oscillatory solutions or solutions tending to zero as \(t\to \infty \).