Periodic solutions in general scalar non-autonomous models with delays (Q385573)

In this paper, existence of periodic solutions is considered for a broad class of scalar differential equations with delays, serving as population models. The authors first establish an existence theorem for the abstract functional differential equation \(x'(t) = \Phi(x)(t)\), where \(\Phi\) is a continuous mapping from the space of continuous \(T\)-periodic functions to itself. Then this theorem is applied to various models, so that concrete sufficient conditions can be easily derived for the existence of periodic solutions. Examples of models include \(x'(t) = -a(t)+h(t, x(t), x(t-\tau(t, x(t))))\), \(x'(t) = -a(t)x(t)+g(t, x(t), x(t-\tau(t, x(t))))\) and \(x'(t) = -f(t, x(t))+g(t, x(t), x(t-\tau(t, x(t))))\). It is also demonstrated that the technique can be used to expand on well-known results as well as to shorten existing proofs in the literature.