Existence of positive solutions of higher order nonlinear neutral differential equations (Q5928729)

The author discusses the higher-order nonlinear neutral differential equation \[ \frac{d^n}{dt^n}[x(t)+h(t)x(t-\tau)]+\sigma f(t, x(g(t)))=0,\quad t \geq t_0 , \] with \(n\geq 2\); \(\sigma=\pm 1\); \(\tau>0\); \(h\in C[t_0-\tau, \infty)\); \(g\in C[t_0, \infty)\), \(\lim_{t\rightarrow \infty}g(t) =\infty\); \(f\in C([t_0, \infty)\times (0, \infty))\), \(f(t, u)\geq 0\) for \((t, u)\in [t_0, \infty)\times (0, \infty),\) and \(f(t, u)\) is nondecreasing in \(u\in (0, \infty)\) for each fixed \(t\in [t_0, \infty)\). It is shown that, for the case where \(h(t)>-1\) and \(h(t)=h(t-\tau)\) on \([t_0, \infty)\), the above equation has a positive solution \(x(t)\) satisfying \[ x(t)=\left[\frac{c}{1+h(t)}+\circ(1)\right]t^k\quad \text{as } t\rightarrow \infty \] for some \(c>0\) if and only if \[ \int^{\infty}t^{n-k-1}f(t, a[g(t)]^k) dt<\infty, \] where \(k\) is an integer with \(0\leq k\leq n-1\) and \(a>0\).