Integral averages and oscillation of second order sublinear differential equations (Q5925259)

Consider the second order sublinear ODE \((1)\quad x''(t)+a(t)f[x(t)]=0,\) where a is a continuous function on \([t_ 0,\infty)\), \(t_ 0>0\), and f is a continuous function on the real line \({\mathbb{R}}\). Suppose that f has a continuous derivative on \({\mathbb{R}}\setminus \{0\}\) and satisfies \(yf(y)>0,\quad f'(y)\geq 0,\quad \forall y\neq 0;\quad \int_{+0}\frac{dy}{f(y)}<\infty,\quad \int_{- 0}\frac{dy}{f(y)}<\infty.\) The purpose of this paper is to present two new oscillation criteria, namely. Theorem 1. Let n be an integer with \(n\geq 2\) and \(\phi\) be a positive and twice continuously differentiable function on \([t_ 0,\infty)\) wth \(\phi '\geq 0\) and \(\phi ''\leq 0\) on \([t_ 0,\infty)\). Equation (1) is oscillatory if \[ \limsup_{t\to \infty}\frac{1}{t^{n- 1}}\int^{t}_{t_ 0}(t-s)^{n-1}[\phi (s)]^{\lambda}a(s)ds=\infty. \] Theorem 2. Suppose that \(\lambda >0\). Let n be an integer with \(n\geq 2\) and \(\phi\) be a positive function (twice continuously differentiable) on \([t_ 0,\infty)\) such that \((\phi ')^ 2\leq C\phi (-\phi '')\) on \([t_ 0,\infty)\), where C is a positive constant. Equation (1) is oscillatory if there exists a continuous function A on \([t_ 0,\infty)\) with \(\int^{\infty}_{t_ 0}([A_+(T)]^ 2/T)dT=\infty,\) where \(A_+(T)=\max \{A(T),0\}\), \(T>t_ 0\), and such that \[ \limsup_{t\to \infty}\frac{1}{t^{n-1}}\int^{t}_{T}(t-s)^{n-1}[\phi (s)]^{\lambda}a(s)ds\geq A(T),\quad \forall T\geq t_ 0. \]