Oscillation and integral norms of coefficients in second-order differential equations (Q486579)

The authors consider the classical second order differential equation \[ u''+q(t)u=0 \tag{1} \] with a continuous function \(q\). Denote by \(u_q(t)\) the nontrivial solution of (1) satisfying \(u_q(0)=0\) and let \(b>0\) be its first positive zero, i.e., \(u_q(b)=0\) and \(u_q(t)>0\), \(t\in (0,b)\). The Sturm comparison theorem and the Lyapunov inequality give the estimates \[ \| q\|_{\infty}:=\max_{t\in [0,b]}\left|q(t)\right|\geq \frac{\pi^2}{b},\quad \| q\|_1:=\int_0^b |q(t)|\,dt>\frac{4}{b}. \] The paper establishes similar bounds for the \(L^p\) norms with \(1<p<\infty\). The main result of the paper reads as follows. {Theorem.} Let \[ W:=\left\{q\in L^p[0,10]:\,\int_0^{10} |q(t)|^p\,dt\leq 1\right\}, \] where \(1<p<\infty\). The infimum \(\beta=\inf_{q\in W}\{t\in (0,10]: u_q(t)=0\}\) is given by the formula \[ \beta=\beta(p)=\left\{\frac{(2p-1)^{2p-1}}{p^p(p-1)^{p-1}} B\left(\frac{2p-1}{2p},\frac{1}{2}\right)^{2p}\right\}^{1/(2p-1)}, \] where \(B(x,y)\) is the Euler Beta function. The upper bound of the interval under consideration is given by the fact that a continuous function close to the function \(q(t)=1/\pi^2\), \(t\in [0,\pi^2]\), \(q(t)=0\), \(t\geq \pi^2\) gives \(\beta\sim \pi^2<10\). The idea of the proof of Theorem is that (1) is replaced by the integral equation \[ u(t)=\int_0^t (t-s)q(s)u(s)=t, \quad t\in [0,10], \] and this equation is studied in detail. This is a nice paper presenting an interesting new result in the classical topic as the distribution of zeros of Jacobi equation (1).