On the growth and the zeros of solutions of higher order linear differential equations with meromorphic coefficients

Abstract

We investigate the growth of meromorphic solutions of homogeneous and nonhomogeneous higher order linear differential equations f(k) + k-1?j=1 Ajf(j) + A0f = 0 (k ? 2); f(k) + k-1 ?j=1 Ajf(j) + A0f = Ak (k ? 2); where Aj(z)(j=0,1,...,k) are meromorphic functions with finite order. Under some conditions on the coefficients, we show that all meromorphic solutions f ?/0 of the above equations have an infinite order and infinite lower order. Furthermore, we give some estimates of their hyper-order, exponent and hyper-exponent of convergence of distinct zeros. We improve the results due to Kwon, Chen and Yang, Bela?di, Chen, Shen and Xu.