Bifurcation results for critical points of families of functionals. (Q2018258)

This paper deals with the bifurcation analysis of critical points of paths of functionals. Given a \(C^2\) real-valued functional defined in a general setting, the first main result of this paper establishes a sufficient condition for the following alternative: either the bifurcation set of the functional has interior points or it disconnects some open connected set of a metrizable, connected smooth Banach manifold. This result is then improved in the case of simply connected Banach manifolds. The proofs combine homotopy arguments with methods in critical point theory. The abstract results are illustrated with an example dealing with families of geodesics in semi-Riemannian manifolds.