- Research Article
- Open Access
- Published:
Oscillation Criteria for Second-Order Forced Dynamic Equations with Mixed Nonlinearities
Advances in Difference Equations volume 2009, Article number: 938706 (2009)
Abstract
We obtain new oscillation criteria for second-order forced dynamic equations on time scales containing mixed nonlinearities of the form ,
with
,
, where
is a time scale interval with
, the functions
are right-dense continuous with
,
is the forward jump operator,
, and
. All results obtained are new even for
and
. In the special case when
and
our theorems reduce to (Y. G. Sun and J. S. W. Wong, Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Applications. 337 (2007), 549–560). Therefore, our results in particular extend most of the related existing literature from the continuous case to arbitrary time scale.
1. Introduction
Let be a time scale which is unbounded above and
a fixed point. For some basic facts on time scale calculus and dynamic equations on time scales, one may consult the excellent texts by Bohner and Peterson [1, 2].
We consider the second-order forced nonlinear dynamic equations containing mixed nonlinearities of the form

with

where denotes a time scale interval, the functions
are right-dense continuous with
,
is the forward jump operator,
, and

By a proper solution of (1.1) on we mean a function
which is defined and nontrivial in any neighborhood of infinity and which satisfies (1.1) for all
, where
denotes the set of right-dense continuously differentiable functions from
to
. As usual, such a solution
of (1.1) is said to be oscillatory if it is neither eventually positive nor eventually negative. The equation is called oscillatory if every proper solution is oscillatory.
In a special case, (1.1) becomes

which is called half-linear for , super-half-linear for
, and sub-half-linear for
. If
, (1.4) takes the form

The oscillation of (1.5) has been studied by many authors, the interested reader is referred to the seminal books by Došlý and Řehák [3] and Agarwal et al. [4, 5], where in addition to mainly oscillation theory, the existence, uniqueness, and continuation of solutions are also discussed. In [3], one may also find several results related to the oscillation of (1.4) when , that is, for

where is the forward difference operator.
There are several methods in the literature for finding sufficient condition for oscillation of solutions in terms of the functions appearing in the corresponding equation, and almost all such conditions involve integrals or sums on infinite intervals [3–19]. The interval oscillation method is different in a sense that the conditions make use of the information of the functions on a union of intervals rather than on an infinite interval. Following El-Sayed [20], many authors have employed this technique in various works [20–30]. For instance, Sun et al. [26], Wong [28], and Nasr [25] have studied (1.5) when and
, while the case
and
is taken into account by Sun and Wong in [16]. The results in [25, 28] have been extended by Sun [27] to superlinear delay differential equations of the form

Further extensions of these results can be found in [30, 31], where the authors have studied some related super-half-linear differential equations with delay and advance arguments.
Recently, there have been also numerous papers on second-order forced dynamic equations on time scales, unifying particularly the discrete and continuous cases and handling many other possibilities. For a sampling of the work done we refer in particular to [6, 8, 9, 12, 13, 22, 32, 33] and the references cited therein. In [22] Anderson and Zafer have extended the above mentioned interval oscillation criteria to second-order forced super-half-linear dynamic equations with delay and advance arguments including

Our motivation in this study stems from the work contained in [34], where the authors have derived interval criteria for oscillation of second-order differential equations with mixed nonlinearities of the form

with

by using a Riccati substitution and an inequality of geometric-arithmetic mean type. As it is indicated in [34], further research on the oscillation of equations of mixed type is necessary as such equations arise in mathematical modeling, for example, in the growth of bacteria population with competitive species. We aim to make a contribution in this direction for a class of more general equations on time scales of the form (1.1) by combining the techniques used in [22, 34]. Notice that when ,
, and
, (1.1) coincides with (1.9), and therefore our results provide new interval oscillation criteria even for
when
. Moreover, for the special case
we obtain interval oscillation criteria for difference equations with mixed nonlinearities of the form

for which almost nothing is available in the literature.
2. Lemmas
We need the following preparatory lemmas. The first two lemmas are given by Wong and Sun as a single lemma [34, Lemma ] for
. The proof for the case
is exactly the same, in fact one only needs to replace the exponents
by
in their proof. Lemma 2.3 is the well-known Young inequality.
Lemma 2.1.
For any given -tuple
satisfying

there corresponds an -tuple
such that

If and
(cf. [34] for the case
) one may take

where is any positive number with
Lemma 2.2.
For any given -tuple
satisfying

there corresponds an -tuple
such that

If and
, it turns out that

Lemma 2.3 (Young's Inequality).
If and
are conjugate numbers
, then

and equality holds if and only if .
Let . Put
,
, and
. It follows from Lemma 2.3 that

for all . Rewriting the above inequality we also have

for all and
.
3. The Main Results
Following [21, 22, 30], denote for with
the admissible set

The main results of this paper are contained in the following three theorems. The arguments used in the proofs have common features with the ones developed in [22, 30, 34].
Theorem 3.1.
Suppose that for any given there exist subintervals
and
of
such that

Let be an
-tuple satisfying (2.2) in Lemma 2.1. If there exists a function
,
, such that

for , where

then (1.1) is oscillatory.
Proof.
To arrive at a contradiction, let us suppose that is a nonoscillatory solution of (1.1). First, we assume that
is positive for all
, for some
.
Let , where
is sufficiently large. Define

It follows that

and hence

By our assumptions (3.2) we have and
for
. Set

Then (3.7) becomes

In view of the arithmetic-geometric mean inequality, see [35],

and equality (3.9) we obtain

Multiplying both sides of inequality (3.11) by and then using the identity

result in

where

As demonstrated in [7, 12], we know that , and that
if and only if

where stands for the inverse function. In our case, since
, dynamic equation (3.15) has a unique solution satisfying
. Clearly, the unique solution is
. Therefore,
on
.
For the benefit of the reader we sketch a proof of the fact that . Note that if
is a right-dense point, then we may write

Applying Young's inequality (Lemma 2.3) with

we easily see that holds. If
is a right-scattered point, then
can be written as a function of
and
as

Using differential calculus, see [7], the result follows.
Now integrating the inequality (3.13) from to
and using
on
we obtain

which of course contradicts (3.3). This completes the proof when is eventually positive. The proof when
is eventually negative is analogous by repeating the arguments on the interval
instead of
.
A close look at the proof of Theorem 3.1 reveals that one cannot take . The following theorem is a substitute in that case.
Theorem 3.2.
Suppose that for any given there exists a subinterval
of
such that

Let be an
-tuple satisfying (2.5) in Lemma 2.2. If there exists a function
such that

where

then (1.1) with is oscillatory.
Proof.
We proceed as in the proof of Theorem 3.1 to arrive at (3.7) with , that is,

Setting

and using again the arithmetic-geometric mean inequality

we have

The remainder of the proof is the same as that of Theorem 3.1.
As it is shown in [34] for the sublinear terms case, we can also remove the sign condition imposed on the coefficients of the sub-half-linear terms to obtain interval criterion which is applicable for the case when some or all of the functions ,
, are nonpositive. We should note that the sign condition on the coefficients of super-half-linear terms cannot be removed alternatively by the same approach. Furthermore, the function
cannot take the value zero on intervals of interest in this case. We have the following theorem.
Theorem 3.3.
Suppose that for any given there exist subintervals
and
of
such that

If there exist a function ,
, and positive numbers
and
with

such that

for , where

with

then (1.1) is oscillatory.
Proof.
Suppose that (1.1) has a nonoscillatory solution. We may assume that is eventually positive on
when
is sufficiently large. If
is eventually negative, then one can repeat the proof on the interval
. Rewrite (1.1) as follows:

with

Clearly,

where

Applying (2.8) and (2.9) to each summation on the right side with

we see that

where

From (3.32) and inequality (3.37) we obtain

where

Set

In view of inequality (3.39) it follows that

The remainder of the proof is the same as that of Theorem 3.1, hence it is omitted.
4. Applications
To illustrate the usefulness of the results we state the corresponding theorems for the special cases ,
, and
. One can easily provide similar results for other specific time scales of interest.
4.1. Differential Equations
Let , then we have
,
, and

where are continuous functions with
, and
. Let
Theorem 4.1.
Suppose that for any given there exist subintervals
and
of
such that

Let be an
-tuple satisfying (2.2) in Lemma 2.1. If there exists a function
,
, such that

for , where

then (4.1) is oscillatory.
Theorem 4.2.
Suppose that for any given there exists a subinterval
of
such that

Let be an
-tuple satisfying (2.5) in Lemma 2.2. If there exists a function
such that

where

then (4.1) with is oscillatory.
Theorem 4.3.
Suppose that for any given there exist subintervals
and
of
such that

If there exist a function ,
, and positive numbers
and
with

such that

for , where

with

then (4.1) is oscillatory.
4.2. Difference Equations
Let , then we have
,
, and

where ,
with
, and
. Let
, and
Theorem 4.4.
Suppose that for any given there exist subintervals
and
of
such that

Let be an
-tuple satisfying (2.2) in Lemma 2.1. If there exists a function
,
, such that

for , where

then (4.13) is oscillatory.
Theorem 4.5.
Suppose that for any given there exists a subinterval
of
such that

Let be an
-tuple satisfying (2.5) in Lemma 2.2. If there exists a function
such that

where

then (4.13) with is oscillatory.
Theorem 4.6.
Suppose that for any given there exist subintervals
and
of
such that

If there exist a function ,
, and positive numbers
and
with

such that

for , where

with

then (4.13) is oscillatory.
4.3.
-Difference Equations
Let with
, then we have
,
and

where with
,
with
, and
. Let
with
, and
Theorem 4.7.
Suppose that for any given there exist subintervals
and
of
such that

Let be an
-tuple satisfying (2.2) in Lemma 2.1. If there exists a function
,
, such that

for , where

then (4.25) is oscillatory.
Theorem 4.8.
Suppose that for any given there exists a subinterval
of
such that

Let be an
-tuple satisfying (2.5) in Lemma 2.2. If there exists a function
such that

where

then (4.25) with is oscillatory.
Theorem 4.9.
Suppose that for any given there exist subintervals
and
of
such that

If there exist a function ,
, and positive numbers
and
with

such that

for , where

with

then (4.25) is oscillatory.
5. Examples
We give three simple examples to illustrate the importance of our results. For clarity, we have taken and
. Then,

Example 5.1.
Consider the constant coefficient differential equation

where and
are real numbers.
Let ,
and
,
is arbitrarily large. Applying Theorem 4.2 we see that every solution of (5.2) is oscillatory if

Example 5.2.
Consider the constant coefficient difference equation

where and
are real numbers.
Let , and
and
,
is arbitrarily large. It follows from Theorem 4.5 that every solution of (5.4) is oscillatory if

Example 5.3.
Consider the constant coefficient -difference equation

where ,
and
are real numbers.
Let , and
and
,
is arbitrarily large. In view of Theorem 4.8, we see that every solution of (5.6) is oscillatory if

6. Remarks
-
(1)
Literature
Equation (1.1) has been studied by Sun and Wong [34] for the case and
. Our results in Section 4.1 coincide with theirs when
, and therefore the results can be considered as an extension from
to
. Since the results in [34] are linked to many well-known oscillation criteria in the literature, the interval oscillation criteria we have obtained provide further extensions of these to time scales.
The results in Sections 4.2 and 4.3 are all new for all values of the parameters. Although there are some results for difference equations in the special case , there is hardly any interval oscillation criteria for the
-difference equations case.
Moreover, since our main results in Section 4 are valid for arbitrary time scales, similar interval oscillation criteria can be obtained by considering other particular time scales.
-
(2)
Generalization
The results obtained in this paper remain valid for more general equations of the form

provided that are continuous and satisfy the growth conditions

To see this, we note that if is eventually positive, then taking into account the intervals where
and
are nonnegative, the above inequalities result in

The arguments afterward follow analogously.
-
(3)
Forms Related to (1.1)
Related to (1.1) are the dynamic equations with mixed delta and nabla derivatives



where denotes the backward jump operator and

It is not difficult to see that time scale modifications of the previous arguments give rise to completely parallel results for the above dynamic equations. For an illustrative example we provide below the version of Theorem 3.1 for (6.4). The other theorems for (6.4), (6.5), and (6.6) can be easily obtained by employing arguments developed for (1.1) in this paper.
Theorem 6.1.
Suppose that for any given there exist subintervals
and
of
such that

Let be an
-tuple satisfying (2.2) in Lemma 2.1. If there exists a function
,
, such that

for , where

then (6.4) is oscillatory.
-
(4)
An Open Problem
It is of theoretical and practical interest to obtain interval oscillation criteria when there are only sub-half-linear terms in (1.1), that is, when holds for all
. Also, the open problems stated in [34] for the special case
with
naturally carry over for (1.1).
References
Bohner M, Peterson A: Dynamic Equations on Time Scales: An Introduction with Applications. Birkhäuser, Boston, Mass, USA; 2001:x+358.
Bohner M, Peterson A: Advances in Dynamic Equations on Time Scales. Birkhäuser, Boston, Mass, USA; 2003:xii+348.
Došlý O, Řehák P: Half-Linear Differential Equations, North-Holland Mathematics Studies. Volume 202. Elsevier; North-Holland, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; 2005:xiv+517.
Agarwal RP, Grace SR: Oscillation Theory for Difference and Functional Differential Equations. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, The Netherlands; 2002.
Agarwal RP, Grace SR, O'Regan D: Oscillation Theory for Second Order Linear, Half-Linear, Superlinear and Sublinear Dynamic Equations. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, The Netherlands; 2002:xiv+672.
Bohner M, Tisdell CC: Oscillation and nonoscillation of forced second order dynamic equations. Pacific Journal of Mathematics 2007,230(1):59-71. 10.2140/pjm.2007.230.59
Došlý O, Marek D: Half-linear dynamic equations with mixed derivatives. Electronic Journal of Differential Equations 2005,2005(90):1-18.
Erbe L, Peterson A, Saker SH: Hille-Kneser-type criteria for second-order linear dynamic equations. Advances in Difference Equations 2006, 2006:-18.
Erbe L, Peterson A, Saker SH: Oscillation criteria for second-order nonlinear delay dynamic equations. Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Applications 2007,333(1):505-522. 10.1016/j.jmaa.2006.10.055
Kartsatos AG: Maintenance of oscillations under the effect of a periodic forcing term. Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society 1972, 33: 377-383. 10.1090/S0002-9939-1972-0330622-0
Manojlović JV: Oscillation criteria for second-order half-linear differential equations. Mathematical and Computer Modelling 1999,30(5-6):109-119. 10.1016/S0895-7177(99)00151-X
Řehák P: Half-linear dynamic equations on time scales: IVP and oscillatory properties. Nonlinear Functional Analysis and Applications 2002,7(3):361-403.
Saker SH: Oscillation criteria of second-order half-linear dynamic equations on time scales. Journal of Computational and Applied Mathematics 2005,177(2):375-387. 10.1016/j.cam.2004.09.028
Sun YG, Agarwal RP:Forced oscillation of
th-order nonlinear differential equations. Functional Differential Equations 2004,11(3-4):587-596.
Sun YG, Saker SH: Forced oscillation of higher-order nonlinear differential equations. Applied Mathematics and Computation 2006,173(2):1219-1226. 10.1016/j.amc.2005.04.065
Sun YG, Wong JSW:Note on forced oscillation of
th-order sublinear differential equations. Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Applications 2004,298(1):114-119. 10.1016/j.jmaa.2004.03.076
Teufel H Jr.: Forced second order nonlinear oscillation. Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Applications 1972, 40: 148-152. 10.1016/0022-247X(72)90037-6
Wang Q-R, Yang Q-G: Interval criteria for oscillation of second-order half-linear differential equations. Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Applications 2004,291(1):224-236. 10.1016/j.jmaa.2003.10.028
Wong JSW: Second order nonlinear forced oscillations. SIAM Journal on Mathematical Analysis 1988,19(3):667-675. 10.1137/0519047
El-Sayed MA: An oscillation criterion for a forced second order linear differential equation. Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society 1993,118(3):813-817.
Anderson DR: Oscillation of second-order forced functional dynamic equations with oscillatory potentials. Journal of Difference Equations and Applications 2007,13(5):407-421. 10.1080/10236190601116209
Anderson DR, Zafer A: Interval criteria for second-order super-half-linear functional dynamic equations with delay and advanced arguments. to appear in Journal of Difference Equations and Applications
Li W-T: Interval oscillation of second-order half-linear functional differential equations. Applied Mathematics and Computation 2004,155(2):451-468. 10.1016/S0096-3003(03)00790-2
Li W-T, Cheng SS: An oscillation criterion for nonhomogenous half-linear differential equations. Applied Mathematics Letters 2002,15(3):259-263. 10.1016/S0893-9659(01)00127-6
Nasr AH: Sufficient conditions for the oscillation of forced super-linear second order differential equations with oscillatory potential. Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society 1998,126(1):123-125. 10.1090/S0002-9939-98-04354-8
Sun YG, Ou CH, Wong JSW: Interval oscillation theorems for a second-order linear differential equation. Computers & Mathematics with Applications 2004,48(10-11):1693-1699. 10.1016/j.camwa.2003.08.012
Sun YG: A note Nasr's and Wong's papers. Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Applications 2003,286(1):363-367. 10.1016/S0022-247X(03)00460-8
Wong JSW: Oscillation criteria for a forced second-order linear differential equation. Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Applications 1999,231(1):235-240. 10.1006/jmaa.1998.6259
Yang Q: Interval oscillation criteria for a forced second order nonlinear ordinary differential equations with oscillatory potential. Applied Mathematics and Computation 2003,135(1):49-64. 10.1016/S0096-3003(01)00307-1
Zafer A: Interval oscillation criteria for second order super-half-linear functional differential equations with delay and advanced arguments. to appear in Mathematische Nachrichten
Güvenilir AF, Zafer A: Second-order oscillation of forced functional differential equations with oscillatory potentials. Computers & Mathematics with Applications 2006,51(9-10):1395-1404. 10.1016/j.camwa.2006.02.002
Řehák P: Hardy inequality on time scales and its applications to half-linear dynamic equations. Journal of Inequalities and Applications 2005,2005(7):495-507.
Řehák P: On certain comparison theorems for half-linear dynamic equations on time scales. Abstract and Applied Analysis 2004,2004(7):551-565. 10.1155/S1085337504306251
Sun YG, Wong JSW: Oscillation criteria for second order forced ordinary differential equations with mixed nonlinearities. Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Applications 2007,334(1):549-560. 10.1016/j.jmaa.2006.07.109
Beckenbach EF, Bellman R: Inequalities, Ergebnisse der Mathematik und ihrer Grenzgebiete, N. F.. Volume 30. Springer, Berlin, Germany; 1961:xii+198.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
About this article
Cite this article
Agarwal, R.P., Zafer, A. Oscillation Criteria for Second-Order Forced Dynamic Equations with Mixed Nonlinearities. Adv Differ Equ 2009, 938706 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1155/2009/938706
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1155/2009/938706
Keywords
- Dynamic Equation
- Oscillation Criterion
- Jump Operator
- Infinite Interval
- Time Scale Modification