On an elementary phase-plane analysis for solving second order BVPs (Q923184)

The author deals with the differential equation (1) \(x''+g(x)=0\), where g: \({\mathbb{R}}\to {\mathbb{R}}\) is a continuous function. He proposes a method to find periodic solutions of (1), with an assigned period, based on an elementary phase-plane analysis of the equivalent first order system \(x'=y\), \(y'=-g(x)\). In section 2, the author investigates the Dirichlet problem in order to achieve this goal. Also, a careful analysis of the positive and negative solutions of the homogeneous two-point BVP, associated to equation (1), is performed which enabled the author to obtain sharp estimates for the time-map and also various improvements of some classical or recent conditions for the solvability of the Dirichlet boundary value problem for (1). This paper is a sequel to the previous work of the author in 1989, 1988. It contains various remarks, corollaries and various formidable theorems which are too complicated to be reproduced here.