Existence and continuation of periodic solutions of Newtonian systems

In this article we study the existence and the continuation of periodic solutions of autonomous Newtonian systems. To prove the results we apply the infinite-dimensional version of the degree for SO(2)-equivariant gradient operators. Using the results due to Rabier we show that the Leray-Schauder degree is not applicable in the proofs of our theorems, because it vanishes.