Approach to a dead core for some reaction-diffusion equations (Q1262443)

We consider solutions of the family of Dirichlet problems \((*)_{\kappa}\) \(u''=\phi^ 2g_ k(u),u(-1)=u(1)=1\) for \(\kappa\in [0,1]\); here \(\phi^ 2\) is a positive constant, \(g_ 0(u)\sim 1/u^{\alpha}\) for u near zero and some \(\alpha\geq 1\), and the \(C^ 1[0,1]\) functions \(g_{\kappa}\) increase to \(g_ 0\) uniformly on compact subsets of (-1,1) as \(\kappa\) \(\to 0\). Such problems model steady-state Langmuir-Hinshelwood reaction kinetics. We examine existence and multiplicity of solutions of \((*)_{\kappa}\). In particular, we show that \((*)_{\kappa}\) for \(\kappa >0\) has one more solution than \((*)_ 0\) and that these ``extra'' solutions of \((*)_{\kappa}\) tend to zero uniformly on compact subsets of (0,1).