Abstract and Applied Analysis

Volume 2014 (2014), Article ID 597325, 6 pages

http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/597325

Research Article

Oscillation of Certain Emden-Fowler Dynamic Equations on Time Scales

Qiaoshun Yang,¹ Lynn Erbe,² and Baoguo Jia³

¹Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Normal College, Jishou University, Jishou, Hunan 416000, China

²Department of Mathematics, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE 68588-0130, USA

³School of Mathematics and Computer Science, Zhongshan University, Guangzhou 510275, China

Received 4 April 2014; Accepted 19 May 2014; Published 26 May 2014

Academic Editor: Douglas R. Anderson

Copyright © 2014 Qiaoshun Yang et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract.

We deal with the oscillation of a generalized Emden-Fowler dynamic equation in the form . We establish some new oscillation criteria for the equation, which improve some of the main results of (H. Liu and P. Liu, 2013). Some examples are given to illustrate the new results.

1. Introduction

The theory of time scales has attracted a great deal of attention since it was first introduced by Hilger [1] in order to unify continuous and discrete analysis. For completeness, we recall the following concepts related to the notion of time scales; see [2, 3] for more details. A time scale is an arbitrary nonempty closed subset of the real numbers . In this paper, since we shall be concerned with the oscillatory behavior of solutions, we shall also assume that . We define the time scale interval by . The forward and backward jump operators are defined by

where and ; here denotes the empty set. A point and is said to be left-dense if , right-dense if and , left-scattered if , and right-scattered if . The graininess function for the time scale is defined by , and for any function , the notation denotes . A function is said to be rd-continuous provided is continuous at right-dense points and at left-dense points in and left-hand limits exist and are finite. The set of all such rd-continuous functions is denoted by . We say that is differentiable at provided

exists when (here by it is understood that approaches in the time scale) and when is continuous at and

Note that if , then the delta derivative is just the standard derivative and when the delta derivative is just the forward difference operator. The set of functions which are differentiable and whose derivative is rd-continuous is denoted by .

In this paper, we consider the oscillatory behavior of the nontrivial solutions of the second-order Emden-Fowler dynamic equation of the form

on an arbitrary time scale , with , where , and is a constant. Throughout this paper, we always assume that

with ; with ;, , , and ; is a continuous function such that , for all and there exists a positive right-dense continuous function defined on such that for all and for all , where is a constant.

By a solution of (4), we mean a nontrivial real-valued function , which has the property that and satisfies (4) that holds on . The solutions vanishing in some neighborhood of infinity will be excluded from our consideration. A solution of (4) is said to be oscillatory if it is neither eventually positive nor eventually negative. Otherwise it is said to be nonoscillatory. The equation itself is said to be oscillatory if all its solutions are oscillatory.

Recently, there has been an increasing interest in studying the oscillation behavior of second-order dynamic equations on time scales; see for example [4–10] and the references contained therein. In [5], the authors presented some criteria for the oscillation and asymptotic behavior of (4) in the case where

Also, we note further that in the proof of [5], the authors used the chain rule in the form

So the natural question which arises is can we find some new oscillation conditions for (4) which do not require (5) and (6) and, in addition, improve the main results in [5]?

The purpose of this paper is to give an affirmative answer to this question. That is, we shall establish some new criteria for the oscillation of (4) which improve the main results in [5]. We also demonstrate that our results cover certain cases which were not covered in [5]. Finally, we give two examples to illustrate the main results.

2. Main Results

For notational simplicity, define

We begin with the following lemmas.

Lemma 1. Assume that (4) has a positive solution on . Then for sufficiently large , one has

Proof. Assume that (4) has a nonoscillatory solution on . Without loss of generality, we assume that there exists a such that on . Then it follows that . From (4), we have

Hence, is decreasing on . We now claim that on . If not, then there exists a such that . Therefore,

that is,

Integrating (11) from to , we find from that

which implies that is eventually negative. This contradicts the fact that on . Thus, on . This completes the proof.

Lemma 2. Assume that (4) has a positive solution on . Then for sufficiently large ,

Proof. As in the proof of Lemma 1, there is a so that

Since is decreasing on , we can choose so that , for . Then

consequently,

Also, we have, for

hence,

Therefore, by combining inequalities (16) and (18) we have

from which we have

This completes the proof.

Lemma 3 (see [11]). Let , where , , , and . Then

For the positive solution of (4), it follows from and Lemma 1 that, for ,

which implies

Combining (23) , (4) one obtains

where .

One may now state and prove the main results. In these, one shall consider the two cases and .

Theorem 4. Let . Assume that there exist a positive rd-continuous differentiable function and a constant such that, for some ,

where . Then (4) is oscillatory on .

Proof. Let be a nonoscillatory solution of (4) on . Without loss of generality, we assume that there exists a (sufficiently large) such that on , and satisfies the conclusions of Lemmas 1 and 2 on . Consider the Riccati substitution

Then . By [2, Theorem 1.20], Lemma 2, and (24), we have

By the Pötzsche chain rule [2, Theorem 1.87],

Thus,

Noting that is increasing on , we get for . Thus,

Substituting (30) into (27), we obtain

Noting that is decreasing, we have . It follows from the definition of that

Substituting (32) into (31), we obtain

Since is decreasing, there exists a constant such that for , which implies

Integrating both sides of (34) from to , we get

Hence, there exists a such that for . Then,

where . Substituting (36) into (33), we get

where

Taking , , from Lemma 3 and (37), we obtain

where . Integrating both sides of (39) from to , we have

Taking of both sides of this last inequality as , we get a contradiction to (25). This completes the proof.

Theorem 5. Let . Assume that there exist a positive rd-continuous differentiable function and a constant such that, for some ,

where is defined as Theorem 4. Then (4) is oscillatory on .

Proof. Assume that is a nonoscillatory solution of (4). Proceeding as in the proof of Theorem 4 we get that (33) holds, that is,

Since and is increasing on , then there exist a and a positive constant such that for . Consequently,

Let

then , and

The remainder of the proof is similar to that of Theorem 4 and is therefore omitted. This completes the proof for the case .

Remark 6. Theorems 4 and 5 remove the Conditions (5) and (6). Moreover, the authors in [5] established oscillation theorems for (4) only for the case . Our results here hold without this assumption, so our results improve the main results [5].

Remark 7. The results established here are valid for general time scales, with no additional restrictions, for example, , , and with , with , and ; see [2, 3].

3. Some Examples

In this section, we give two examples to illustrate our main results.

Example 1. Let (), , . Consider the neutral nonlinear dynamic equation

where satisfies , and .

Here,

It is clear that holds, and , .

Let . Noting that implies for , we get

Thus, by Theorem 4, (46) is oscillatory.

Example 2. Consider the neutral dynamic equation

where are constants, satisfies , and .

For (4), we let

Since

then holds and .

Let . Noting that implies for , we have

Thus, by Theorem 5, (49) is oscillatory.

Conflict of Interests

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interests regarding the publication of this paper.

Acknowledgments

Qiaoshun Yang was supported by The Foundation of Hunan Educational Department (no. 13C753) and The Main Foundation of Jishou University (no. 2012JSUJGA23). The work of Lynn Erbe was performed during a visit to Zhongshan (Sun Yat-sen) University in Guangzhou, China. Baoguo Jia was supported by The National Natural Science Foundation of China (no. 11271380); The Guangdong Province Key Laboratory of Computational Science; and The Guangdong Province Natural Science Foundation (S2013010013050).

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