Results on infinite-dimensional topology and applications to the structure of the critical set of nonlinear Sturm--Liouville operators (Q1869776)

A nonhomogeneous and nonlinear Sturm-Liouville problem with Dirichlet boundary conditions on the half-line is considered. Its differential operator \(F\) is assumed to be generic (``tamed'' by appropriate constraints), possessing a critical set \(C\) defined as a subset of the (Sobolev) domain of \(F\) where the ``differential'' Fredholm operator \(DF\) has zero eigenvalue. The authors show that there exists a diffeomorphism in the domain of \(F\) which maps \(C\) into a union of isolated parallel hyperplanes (in this way, the thirty years single-hyperplane result due to Ambrosetti and Prodi on inversion of a narrower set of maps between Banach spaces is generalized in one-dimensional case). In the proof, they show, first, that each connected component of \(C\) is contractible (has a trivial homotopy group -- to show this, the authors need oscillation theorems and stay within one dimension, therefore) and, second, that one may replace homotopy equivalences by diffeomorphisms. In this way, they do not need to assume the convexity or particular asymptotics for their nonlinearity.