Krasnoselskii's theorem on operators compressing a cone: Application to some singular boundary value problems (Q1173886)

The authors give a modified version of a theorem of Krasnoselskij on operators that compress a cone in a Banach space, and apply the modification and the original theorem to the search for positive solutions of boundary value problems of the form \[ Lu(x)=- u''(x)+p(x)u'(x)+q(x)u(x)=f(x,u(x),u'(x)),\quad 0\leq x\leq 1 \] \[ au(0)+bu'(0)=cu(1)+du'(1)=0. \] To implement the functional analytic approach, the equation is transformed into an integral equation by means of the Green function of the linear part. The applications of interest are those where \(f(x,u(x),u'(x))=k(x)u(x)^{-\alpha}u'(x)^ \sigma\), motivated by the study of similarity solutions of the equation \[ \theta_ t=\nabla(K(\theta)\|\nabla\theta\|^{p- 1}\nabla\theta). \] This equation models, among other things, the flow of gas through porous media.