No label defined (Q4952832)

This paper is concerned with oscillation of the functional equation \[ y(t)-y(t-\tau) +\sum^m_{j=1} p_j(t)y (t-\sigma_j)=0,\;t\geq 0,\tag{1} \] where \(p_1,p_2, \dots, p_m\in C([0,\infty), [0,\infty))\) and \(0<\tau< \sigma_1 \leq\sigma_2 \leq\cdots \leq\sigma_m\). It is shown that if \(\sigma_j=k_j \tau+ \theta_j\), \(0\leq\theta_j <\tau\), \(k_j\) is an integer \(\geq 2\) for \(j=1,2,\dots,m\) if \[ \sum^m_{j=1} \liminf_{t\to\infty} p_j(t)= \alpha\in [0,1/4), \] and if there is a nonnegative nondecreasing and divergent sequence \(\{t_n\}^\infty_{n=1}\) such that \[ \limsup_{n\to\infty} \left\{\sum^m_{j=1} \min_{s\in[t_n,t_n+ \tau]} p_j(s) \right\}>1- {1\over 2}\bigl(1-\sqrt {1-4\alpha} \bigr), \] then (1) is oscillatory. It is also shown that if \(\sigma_j=k_j \tau+\theta_j\), \(0\leq \theta_j <\tau\), \(k_j\) is an integer \(\geq 2\) for \(j=1,2,\dots,m\), if \(k=\min \{k_1,\dots, k_m\}\), \[ \liminf_{t\to\infty} \sum^{k-1}_{i=1} \sum^m_{j=1} p_j (t+i \tau)> \alpha\in [0,-1 +\sqrt 2], \] and \[ \limsup_{t\to\infty} \sum^k_{i=1} \sum^m_{j=1} p_j(t+i \tau)>1- {1\over 2}\left\{1- \alpha-\sqrt {1-2\alpha- {k+1 \over k-1}\alpha^2} \right\}, \] then (1) is oscillatory.