Homoclinic orbits for second-order Hamiltonian systems with some twist condition (Q437524)

The authors study the existence of homoclinic solutions for a second-order non-autonomous Hamiltonian system \(\ddot{q}-L(t)q+\nabla_q W(t,q)=0\) where \(L(t)\) is a symmetric matrix-valued function. Under the assumption that the smallest eigenvalue \(l(t)\) of \(L(t)\) satisfies \(l(t)|t|^c\to\infty\) for \(|t|\to\infty\), with some constant \(c<0\), and under a twist condition on the nonlinearity between the origin and infinity, results on existence and multiplicity of nontrivial homoclinic orbits are proved. The assumptions allow for linear growth of \(\nabla_q W(t,q)\) with respect to \(q\) and do not require positive definiteness of \(L(t)\) for all \(t\in\mathbb{R}\).