The problem of existence of periodic solutions for neutral functional differential system with nonlinear difference operator (Q655515)

This paper deals with the following neutral functional differential equation with nonlinear difference operator \[ \frac{d}{dt}D_1(x_t)=f(t, x_t), \] where \(x_t=x_t(\theta)\), \(\theta\in [-\tau, 0]\), \[ D_1:C([-\tau, 0], {\mathbb R}^{n})\to {\mathbb R}^{n},\;D_1(\varphi)=\varphi(0)-B\varphi(-\tau)-h(\varphi), \] \(B=[b_{ij}]_{n\times n}\) is a real matrix, \(h\in C(C([\tau, 0], {\mathbb R}^{n}), {\mathbb R}^{n})\), \(f\in C({\mathbb R}\times C([-\tau, 0], {\mathbb R}^{n}), {\mathbb R}^{n})\) with \(f(t+\omega, \varphi)\equiv f(t, \varphi)\) for all \(\varphi\in C([-\tau, 0], {\mathbb R}^{n})\), and, for any bounded set \(\Omega\subset C([-\tau, 0], {\mathbb R}^{n})\), \(f([0, \omega]\times \Omega)\) is bounded in \({\mathbb R}^{n}\), \(\tau>0\) is a constant. Firstly, the authors study some new properties of the nonlinear difference operator \(D_1\). Then, by using these new properties, they investigate the existence of periodic solutions to the equation above by means of the classical coincidence degree theory due to Mawhin. Finally, an example is also given to illustrate the main the results.