On oscillatory solutions of certain forced Emden-Fowler like equations (Q947555)

Many authors dealt with the oscillation or non-oscillation of a forced Emden-Fowler equation \[ x^{\prime\prime}(t)+a(t)\left| x(t)\right| ^{\lambda} \text{sign\,}x(t)=e(t),\qquad t\geq t_{0}\geq1,\tag{1} \] which has several important applications. Typical assumptions on the forcing term imposed originally by \textit{A. G. Kartsatos} [Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 33, 377--383 (1972; Zbl 0234.34040, Zbl 0223.34031), J. Differ. Equations 10, 355--363 (1971; Zbl 0216.11504)] read as follows: there exists a \(C^{2}\) function \(E(t)\) defined for \(t\geq t_{0}\) such that \(E^{\prime\prime}(t)=e(t),\) \(E(t)\) is oscillatory and small in some sense. Of course, this is a special class of functions, and important cases when \(E(t)\) is not small or does not oscillate (think, for instance, of \(e(t)=t^{\alpha}\cos t\)) are left out. The present interesting study complements recent investigations of \textit{C. H. Ou} and \textit{J. S. W. Wong} [J. Math. Anal. Appl. 262, No.~2, 722--732 (2001; Zbl 0997.34059)] by considering the case when \(E(t)\) is negative for \(t\geq t_{0},\) \(E(t)\rightarrow0\) as \(t\rightarrow\infty,\) and \(E^{\prime}\in L^{1}\left( [t_{0},\infty),\mathbb{R}\right) .\) Using a chain of delicate technical arguments and estimates, the author establishes existence of oscillatory solutions to ({1}) which decay at infinity as \(O\left( t^{-\mu}\right) \) for a positive \(\mu>0\) which can be chosen as close as desired to a quantity \(\mu^{\ast}=2/(\lambda-1)\) that ``separates'' oscillatory and non-oscillatory solutions. It is also proved that, for any \(\mu>\mu^{\ast}\) and any function \(E(t)<0\) such that \(E(t)=o\left( t^{-\mu }\right), \) equation ({1}) has a negative solution that behaves as \(o\left( t^{-\mu}\right) \) at infinity.