Solutions of sign-changing fractional differential equation with the fractional derivatives (Q1925433)

Summary: We study the singular fractional-order boundary-value problem with a sign-changing nonlinear term \(-\mathcal D^\alpha x(t) = p(t)f(t, x(t), \mathcal D^{\mu_1}x(t), \mathcal D^{\mu_2}x(t), \dots, \mathcal D^{\mu_{n-1}}x(t)), 0 < t < 1, \mathcal D^{\mu_i}x(0) = 0, 1 \leq i \leq n - 1, \mathcal D^{\mu_{n-1}+1}x(0) = 0, \mathcal D^{\mu_{n-1}}x(1) = \sum^{p-2}_{j=1} a_j \mathcal D^{\mu_{n-1}}x(\xi_j)\), where \(n - 1 < \alpha \leq n, n \in \mathbb N\) and \(n \geq 3\) with \(0 < \mu_1 < \mu_2 < \cdots < \mu_{n-2} < \mu_{n-1}\) and \(n - 3 < \mu_{n-1} < \alpha - 2, a_j \in \mathbb R, 0 < \xi_1 < \xi_2 < \cdots < \xi_{p-2} < 1\) satisfying \(0 < \sum^{p-2}_{j=1} a_j \xi^{\alpha - \mu_{n-1} - 1}_j < 1, \mathcal D^\alpha\) is the standard Riemann-Liouville derivative, \(f : [0, 1] \times \mathbb R^n \rightarrow \mathbb R\) is a sign-changing continuous function and may be unbounded from below with respect to \(x_i\), and \(p : (0, 1) \rightarrow [0, \infty)\) is continuous. Some new results on the existence of nontrivial solutions for the above problem are obtained by computing the topological degree of a completely continuous field.