Strongly Oscillatory and Nonoscillatory Subspaces of Linear Equations

Abstract

Consider the nth order linear equationand particularly the third order equationA nontrivial solution of (1)n is said to be oscillatory or nonoscillatory depending on whether it has infinitely many or finitely many zeros on [a, ∞). Let denote respectively the set of all solutions, oscillatory solutions, nonoscillatory solutions of (1)n. is an n-dimensional linear space. A subspace is said to be nonoscillatory or strongly oscillatory respectively if every nontrivial solution of is nonoscillatory or oscillatory. If contains both oscillatory and nonoscillatory solutions then is said to be weakly oscillatory.