Homoclinic orbits for a singular second-order neutral differential equation (Q961054)

The authors study the singular second-order functional differential equation \[ \ddot q(t-\tau)+ f(t,q(t), q(t-\tau), q(t-2\tau))= 0, \] where \(\tau> 0\) is a constant, \(t\in\mathbb{R}\), \(q\in\mathbb{R}^n\) \((n\geq 3)\), \(f\in C(\mathbb{R}\times \mathbb{R}^n\times \mathbb{R}^n\times \mathbb{R}^n,\mathbb{R}^n)\) and \({\partial f\over\partial t}\) are \(\tau\)-periodic in \(t\) and \(\neq 0\). They ask under which conditions there exists a homoclinic solution, i.e., \(q(t)\) such that \(q(t)\to 0\) as \(t\to\pm\infty\). They show that if the function \(f\) can be obtained as the sum of partial derivatives of a certain function \(F\) with certain properties, then the equation possesses a nontrivial homoclinic orbit.