Almost homoclinics for nonautonomous second order Hamiltonian systems by a variational approach (Q961983)

Consider the following second order Hamiltonian systems \[ \ddot{q}+\nabla V(t,q)=f(t),\tag{1} \] where \(t\in \mathbb R, q\in \mathbb R^N\) and \(V:\mathbb R\times \mathbb R^N\longrightarrow \mathbb R\), \(f:\mathbb R\longrightarrow \mathbb R^N\). A nonzero solution \(u\) of (1) is said to be almost homoclinic (to 0) if \(u(t)\rightarrow 0\) as \(|t|\rightarrow\infty\). In this paper an almost homoclinic solution \(q_0\in E\) ia obtained under the following conditions (\(V_1\))\ \ \ \ \(V(t,x)=-\frac{1}{2}(L(t)x,x)+W(t,x)\) for all \(t\in \mathbb R\), \(x\in \mathbb R^N\); (\(V_2\))\ \ \ \ \(L \in C(\mathbb R,\mathbb R^{N{^2}})\) is a symmetric and positively definite matrix for all \(t\in \mathbb R\), i.e. there is a \(\alpha>0\) such that \[ (L(t)x,x)\geq \alpha|x|^2 \] for all \(t\in \mathbb R\), \(x\in \mathbb R^N\); (\(V_3\))\ \ \ \ \(W\) is \(C^1-\)smooth and there exists \(\mu>2\) such that \[ 0<\mu W(t,x)\leq (\nabla W(t,x),x) \] for all \(t\in \mathbb R\), \(x\in \mathbb R^N\); (\(V_4\))\ \ \ \ \(\nabla W(t,x)=0(|x|)\) as \(x\longrightarrow 0\) uniformly with respect to \(t\); (\(V_5\))\ \ \ \ there is a continuous map \(\overline{W}:\mathbb R^N\longrightarrow \mathbb R\) such that \[ W(t,x)\leq \overline{W}(x) \] for all \(t\in \mathbb R\), \(x\in \mathbb R^N\); (\(V_6\))\ \ \ \ \(f:\mathbb R\longrightarrow \mathbb R^N\) is continuous and \(f\neq 0\); (\(V_7\))\ \ \ \ \(M<\frac{1}{2\beta^2}\) and \(\|f\|_{L^2(\mathbb R, \mathbb R^N)}<\frac{\sqrt{2}}{2}\left(\frac{1}{2\beta^2}-M\right)\), where \(M:=\max\{\overline{W}(x)| x\in \mathbb R^N, \|x\|=1\}\) and \(\beta^{-1}=\sqrt{\min\{1,\alpha\}}\). The result in this paper extends the result in [\textit{P. H. Rabinowitz} and \textit{K. Tanaka} [Math. Z. 206, No. 3, 473--499 (1991; Zbl 0707.58022)] to the case where \(f=0\) and conditions (\(V_2\)), (\(V_6\)) are weaker than the corresponding conditions in [1cit.]. A similar result is also obtained in [\textit{D.-L. Wu, X.-P. Wu, C.-L. Tang}, J. Math. Anal. Appl. 367, No. 1, 154--166 (2010; Zbl 1246.37084)].