On the existence of forced oscillations for the spherical pendulum acted on by a retarded periodic force (Q650172)

Existence of \(T\)-periodic solutions of the retarded differential equation \[ \ddot x_{\pi}(t) = F(t, x_t) \] on the sphere \(S^n \) is proved, where \(n \) is even, \(\ddot x_{\pi}\) denotes the tangential component of the acceleration, and \(F\) is \(T\)-periodic in \(t\). (The state space is \( C^0((-\infty, 0], S^n)\).) The proof is based on the nontriviality of the Euler-Poincaré-characteristic, wich due to an earlier result implies the existence of an unbounded continuum \(\Sigma\) of solution pairs \((\lambda,x)\) for the parametrized equation \(\ddot x_{\pi}(t) = \lambda F(t, x_t)\), containing the constant solutions \( (0, q) \; (q \in S^n)\). The key argument is as follows: If \( \Sigma\) were bounded by \(1\) in the \( \lambda-\)direction, and hence unbounded in the \(x\)-direction, it would contain solutions with arbitrarily high energy. Boundedness conditions on \(F\) imply that for solutions of sufficiently high energy, a rotation number can be defined, which would take arbitrarily high values on \( \Sigma\), but at the same time be constant on \( \Sigma\) -- a contradiction.