Impact oscillators of Hill's type with indefinite weight: periodic and chaotic dynamics (Q887708)

The authors study some dynamical aspects of a one-dimensional nonlinear impact oscillator of the form \[ x''+f(x)x'+q(t)g(x)=0, \qquad x(t)>0, \] where the origin acts as an elastic barrier, in such a way that \(x'(t_0^+)=-x'(t_0^-)\) when \(x(t_0)=0\). The nonlinearity \(g(x)\) is assumed to be superlinear and the weight \(q(t)\) is indefinite and may have infinitely many zeros in a finite interval. By means of a coordinate transformation and analysis of the equivalent system, it is proved the existence of globally defined bouncing solutions with prescribed number of impacts in and intervals of constant sign of \(q\). Furthermore, in the case when \(q\) is periodic, it is proved the existence of chaotic-like dynamics, in the sense that the associated Poincaré map is topologically semiconjugated to the Bernoulli shift.