Degree and global bifurcation for elliptic equations with multivalued unilateral conditions (Q2492465)

The authors consider problems of the form \[ \lambda\in\Lambda,\quad u\in\mathbb H,\quad u-\lambda Au-G(\lambda,u)\in M(\lambda,u), \] where \(\Lambda\subset\mathbb R\), \(\mathbb H\) is a real Hilbert space, \(A:\mathbb H\to\mathbb H\) is linear, compact and symmetric, \(G:\Lambda\times\mathbb H\to\mathbb H\) is continuous and compact, \(M(\lambda,u)\subset\mathbb H\) is nonempty, compact and convex for all \((\lambda,u)\in\Lambda\times\mathbb H\), and \(M\) is upper semicontinuous and compact. Let \(d(\lambda)\) denote the degree of the multivalued mapping \(I-\lambda A-G(\lambda,\cdot)-M(\lambda,\cdot)\) with respect to a suitable ball in \(\mathbb H\) and the zero right hand side. Assuming that \(\lambda_1<\lambda_2\) and \(1/\lambda_1\), \(1/\lambda_2\) are eigenvalues of \(A\), the authors find sufficient conditions guaranteeing \(d(\lambda_1)\neq d(\lambda_2)\). This condition guarantees that there exists a bifurcation point \(\lambda\in[\lambda_1,\lambda_2]\) and the corresponding bifurcation is global. The abstract results are applied to elliptic problems of the form \[ \Delta u(x)+\lambda u(x)+g(\lambda,u(x),\nabla u(x)) \in [\underline f(\lambda,x,u(x),\nabla u(x)), \overline f(\lambda,x,u(x),\nabla u(x))], \quad x\in\Omega, \] complemented by boundary conditions of the form \[ u(x)=0 \text{ on }\Gamma_0,\qquad \partial u(x)/\partial n\in [\underline m(\lambda,x,u(x)), \overline m(\lambda,x,u(x))] \text{ on }\Gamma_1. \] Here, \(\Omega\) is a bounded domain in \(\mathbb R^n\).