Cantor families of periodic solutions for wave equations via a variational principle

We prove existence of small amplitude periodic solutions of completely resonant wave equations with frequencies in a Cantor set of asymptotically full measure, via a variational principle. A Lyapunov-Schmidt decomposition reduces the problem to a finite dimensional bifurcation equation—variational in nature—defined on a Cantor set of non-resonant parameters. The Cantor gaps are due to “small divisors” phenomena. To solve the bifurcation equation we develop a suitable variational method. In particular, we do not require the typical “Arnold non-degeneracy condition” of the known theory on the nonlinear terms. As a consequence our existence results hold for new generic sets of nonlinearities.