Time-Periodic Solutions of a Driven--Damped $ϕ^4$ Equation on Bounded Domains

Abstract

We prove the existence of time-periodic solutions for a driven--damped $ϕ^4$ wave equation posed on a bounded spatial domain with periodic boundary conditions. The result is obtained at the level of the full partial differential equation. The analysis is based on a Lyapunov--Schmidt decomposition in a time-periodic function space. A key structural feature is the presence of linear damping, which ensures uniform invertibility of the associated linear operator on the complement of the kernel and removes the need for nonresonance conditions. After introducing a truncation to control the cubic nonlinearity, we solve the complement equation via a contraction mapping argument and reduce the problem to a scalar kernel equation. The latter is treated using a mean/zero-mean decomposition and a fixed-point argument. A period-averaged energy estimate then allows one to remove the truncation and obtain a time-periodic weak solution under explicit smallness conditions on the forcing parameters