Necessary and suffient conditions for existence of periodic motions of forced systems of particles (Q5943590)

The author continues his presentation of results on the periodic motions of forced systems of particles with nearest-neighbour interaction, that he began in his earlier paper [Z. Angew. Math. Phys. 51, No. 3, 333-345 (2000; Zbl 0999.82050)]. This paper concerns the existence of periodic solutions to a one-dimensional system of particles periodically perturbed with nearest-neighbour interaction among the particles and the goal is to obtain necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of \(T\)-periodic solutions over the mean values of the external forces. Results are given in the two cases: (i) when the number of particles is finite, and (ii) when the number of particles is infinite. There are examples at the end of the paper.