A positive solution for singular discrete boundary value problems with sign-changing nonlinearities (Q2498189)

The authors study the existence of positive solutions of the second-order discrete boundary value problem \[ -\Delta^2 u(k-1) = g(k, u(k)) + \lambda h(k, u(k)), \quad k \in [1, T], \qquad u(0) = 0 = u(T+1), \tag{1} \] where \(\lambda >0\), \(T>2\) is a positive integer and the functions \(g : [1, T] \times (0, \infty) \to \mathbb{R}, h : [1, T] \times [0, \infty) \to [0, \infty)\) are continuous. The nonlinearity may be singular in its dependent variable and is allowed to change sign. Throughout the paper, for every two nonnegative integers \(a, b\) with \(b>a\), \([a, b]\) denotes the discrete interval \(\{a, a+1, \ldots, b\}\) and \(C([0, T+1])\) denotes the class of the functions continuous on \([0, T+1]\) (discrete topology). The main result of the paper provides sufficient conditions such that there exists \(\lambda_0\geq 0\) with the property that for every \(\lambda \geq \lambda_0\), problem (1) has at least one solution \(u \in C([0, T+1])\) and \(u(k) >0\) for \(k \in [1, T]\).