Cyclic differential equations and period three solutions of differential- delay equations (Q789594)

The paper deals with nontrivial periodic solutions of differential-delay equations of the type \[ (1)\quad y'(t)=-\alpha g(y(t-N_ 1),y(t-N_ 2),...,y(t-N_ k)), \] where \(g:{\mathbb{R}}^ k\to {\mathbb{R}}\) is a given function, \(N_ i\) are integers and \(\alpha\) is a real parameter. It is important to be able to show that (1) has no nontrivial periodic solutions of certain periods. The cyclic differential equations \[ (2)\quad y'\!_ i=-\alpha f_{i+1}(y_{i+1})-\beta f_{i+2}(y_{i+2}) \] where the indices i are written mod 3 and \(y_ i(t)=y(t-i)\) are considered in Section 1. Several theorems are proved which show that (2) can have no nonconstant periodic solutions under certain conditions on \(f_ i\), \(\alpha\) and \(\beta\). These theorems are applied in studying the equation \(x'(t)=\lambda f(x(t-4))-k\lambda f(x(t- 1))\) in Sections 2 and 3 of the paper.