A continuation approach to some forced superlinear Sturm-Liouville boundary value problems (Q1333761)

The paper addresses the problem of existence and multiplicity of solutions of nonlinear ordinary differential equations of the form \(u''(t) + g(u(t)) = p(t,u(t), u'(t))\), \(t \in [a,b]\), with boundary conditions of Sturm-Liouville type at \(a\) and \(b\). The function \(g\) is assumed to be continuous on \(\mathbb{R}\) and superlinear, that is, \(g(u)/u \to \infty\) as \(| u | \to \infty\), and \(p\) is continuous on \([a,b] \times \mathbb{R}^ 2\) and satisfies a linear growth condition in the last two arguments. For that, a variant of the Leray-Schauder continuation method for periodic boundary conditions is extended to general Sturm- Liouville boundary conditions. Together with an explicit calculation of the degree for Sturm-Liouville problems, this method is applied successfully to the problems under consideration.