The number of nontrivial solutions to Hammerstein nonlinear integral equations (Q1078465)

Consider the nonlinear Hammerstein integral equation (1) \(\phi =A\phi\), where \(A\phi (x)=\int_{G}k(x,y)f(y,\phi (y))dy,\) G is a measurable subset of \(R^ N\) such that \(0<mes G<+\infty\), f(y,u) is defined in \(G\times (-\infty,+\infty)\) and satisfies the Carathéodory condition and \(| f(x,u)| \leq a+b| u|^{p-1}\) for each \(x\in G\) and \(u\in (-\infty,+\infty)\) and some \(p>2\). Assume further that k(y,y) is a \(L_ 2(G\times G)\)-kernel, which is symmetric and all its non-zero eigenvalues are positive (or has only a finite number of negative eigenvalues). If \(\int_{G}\int_{G}| k(x,y)|^ pdx dy<+\infty\) and there exist constants \(\tau\in (0,1/2)\) and \(M>0\) such that \(\int^{u}_{0}f(x,v)dv\leq \tau uf(x,u)\) for each u, \(| u| \geq M\) and each \(x\in G\) and the function \(f(x,u)u^{-1}\) satisfies some additional conditions, then the integral equation (1) has at least one nontrivial solution in \(L_ p(G)\). The case of infinite many nontrivial solutions of (1) in \(L_ p(G)\) is also studied. Some of these results which generalize that of \textit{A. Ambrosetti} and \textit{P. H. Rabinowitz} [J. Funct. Anal. 14, 349-381 (1973; Zbl 0273.49063)] are applied to two- point boundary value problems for nonlinear ordinary differential equations.