Local conditions insuring bifurcation from the continuous spectrum (Q1961434)

We consider a family of equations \[ -\Delta u(x)+\lambda u(x)= f\bigl(x,u(x)\bigr), \quad\lambda>0,\;x\in\mathbb{R}^N, \leqno (1)_\lambda \] where the nonlinearity \(f\) satisfies \(f(x,0)=0\), a. e. \(x\in\mathbb{R}^N\). We show that weak conditions on \(f(x,\cdot)\) around zero suffices to guarantee that \(\lambda=0\) is a bifurcation point for \((1)_\lambda\). Namely that there exists a sequence \(\{ (\lambda_n,u_n)\}\subset\mathbb{R}^+\times H^1(\mathbb{R}^N)\) of nontrivial solutions of \((1)_{\lambda_n}\) with \(\lambda_n\to 0\) and \(\|u_n\|_{H^1 (\mathbb{R}^N)}\to 0\). Our solutions are obtained using a mountain-pass lemma. A key feature is to relate the norm of our solutions to the behaviour of the function \(\lambda \to c(\lambda)\) as \(\lambda\to 0\). Here \(c(\lambda)\) denotes the mountain-pass value corresponding to \((1)_\lambda\).