Global bifurcation and nodal solutions for a Sturm-Liouville problem with a nonsmooth nonlinearity (Q2436868)

The authors consider the class of nonlinear Sturm-Liouville problem \[ -(pu')' + qu = \lambda au + F(t,u,u',\lambda) \] for \(t \in (0, 1)\) with the boundary conditions \[ b_0u(0) + c_0u'(0) = 0, b_1u(1) + c_1u'(1) = 0; \] where \(p, a\) are both positive on \([0, 1]\) \(q, a\) are both continuous, and \(p\) is continuously differentiable, \(b_i, c_i\) are real numbers such that \(|b_i| + |c_i| \not = 0\), \(i = 0, 1\). The nonlinear term \(F\) has the form \(F = f + g\) with \(f, g\) being continuous on \([0, 1] \times \mathbb{R}^3\) and satisfying \(|\frac{f(t,u,s, \lambda)}{u}| \leq M\) for some positive constant \(M\) and all \(t \in [0, 1]\), \(0 < |u| \leq 1\), \(|s| \leq 1\), \(\lambda \in \mathbb{R}\); \(g(t,u,s, \lambda) = o(|u| + |s|)\) near \((u, s) = (0, 0)\), uniformly in \(t \in [0, 1]\) and \(\lambda\) on bounded sets. For these nondifferentiable nonlinear Sturm-Liouville problems, the authors establish the unilateral global bifurcation from the trivial solution axis or from infinity, respectively. This result is further used to determine the interval of \(r\) in which there exist nodal solutions for the problem \[ u^{\prime \prime} (t) + r a(t) f(u) = 0, \, t \in (0, 1), \] with \[ u(0) = u(1) = 0, \] where \(a\) is a positive continuous function on \([0, 1]\), \(f \in C(\mathbb{R}, \mathbb{R})\) (the differentiability at the origin and infinity are not assumed). A sequel to this article has appeared in [the authors, Electron. J. Differ. Equ. 2014, Paper No.~03, 10 p. (2014; Zbl 1292.34027)].