Elliptic quadratic forms, focal points, and a generalized theory of oscillation

AbstractThe purpose of this paper is to generalize the theory, methods, and results for oscillation of second-order normal ordinary differential equations. This purpose is obtained by use of a theory of quadratic forms on Hilbert spaces given by Hestenes and the author.In particular, the ideas of this paper may be applied to second-order abnormal problems of differential equations, higher-order control problems, integral and partial differential equations, abstract approximation problems, and to finite dimensional approximations which lead to meaningful computer algorithms.For expository purposes some examples are included. Finally we show that specific existence and comparison theorems for the second-order case may be generalized to the 2nth-order case