On S-shaped bifurcation curves for a two-point boundary value problem arising in a theory of thermal explosion (Q255442)

The authors study the bifurcation curve and exact multiplicity of positive solutions of a two-point boundary value nonlinear problem arising in the theory of thermal explosion \[ \begin{aligned} &u''(x)+\lambda \exp(\frac{au}{a+u})=0, \quad -1<x<1,\\ &u(-1)=u(1)=0, \end{aligned} \] where \(a>0\) is the activation energy parameter. This is the one-dimensional case of a problem arising in the study of standard models of ignition in the context of thermal diffusive combustion [\textit{J. Bebernes} and \textit{D. Eberly}, Mathematical problems from combustion theory. New York, NY etc.: Springer-Verlag (1989; Zbl 0692.35001)]. The authors develop some new time-map techniques with the application of Sturm's theorem about the determination of the exact number of distinct real zeros of invariant polynomials on some interval and prove that, if \(a \geq a^{**} \approx 4.107\), the bifurcation curve is S-shaped on the \((\lambda, \|u \|_{\infty})\)-plane.