A correction for a paper by J. Smoller and A. Wassermann (Q1263717): Difference between revisions

\textit{J. Smoller} and \textit{A. Wasserman} [ibid. 39, 269-290 (1981; Zbl 0425.34028)] presented some ideas and results on the bifurcation of steady-state solutions of a reaction-diffusion equation in one space variable. Because of the proof of their theorem 2.1 is incorrect (in case \(a>0)\), the author finds one additional hypothesis to be necessary and gives the result: If \(f(x)=-(x-a)(x-b)(x-c)\) satisfies the following conditions: (i) \(0<a<b<c\); (ii) \(\int^{c}_{a}f(s)ds>0\); (iii) there exists an r, \(b<r<c\), \(\int^{r}_{a}f(s)ds=0\) such that \(2F(a)- rf(r)<0,\) then T has exactly one critical point, a minimum.