The number of stable periodic solutions of time-dependent Hamiltonian systems with one degree of freedom (Q4236785)

The main result of the paper states that given \(F: \mathbb{R} ^2 \Rightarrow \mathbb{R} ^2\) analytic and area preserving, \(F \neq identity\), then every stable fixed point is isolated. The proof combines classical results on the structure of the zeros of an analytic function with the theory of fixed point free homeomorphisms of the plane. The theorem has a natural translation in terms of T-periodic solutions to time dependent T-periodic Hamiltonian systems with one degree of freedom, taking \(F\) to be the associated Poincaré map. As a corollary, the author proves that if, for one such system, there is an \textit{a priori} bound on the T-periodic solutions, then the number of T-periodic solutions is finite. As a second corollary, the author extends the result obtained by \textit{E. N. Dancer} and \textit{R. Ortega} [J. Dyn. Differ. Equations 6, No. 4, 631-637 (1994; Zbl 0811.34018)] on the stability of the minimizers of the action functional of one degree of freedom mechanical systems with periodic potentials to the case of nonisolated minimizers for analytic potentials.