Existence of positive solutions in the superlinear case via coincidence degree: the Neumann and the periodic boundary value problems (Q498680)

The authors consider the positive solutions of the second order nonlinear boundary value problem \[ u'' + a(x)g(u) = 0, \;\; {\mathcal B}(u,u') = 0, \] where \(g : \mathbb R^+ \to \mathbb R^+\) is continuous, \(g(0) = 0\), \(g(s) > 0\) for \(s > 0\), \(a \in L^1(0,T)\) and \({\mathcal B}(u) = (u'(0),u'(T))\) or \((u(T)-u(0),u'(T)-u'(0))\). A necessary conditions for the existence of a positive solution is that \(a\) changes sign and has negative mean value. Using coincidence degree together with delicate estimates, the authors prove the existence of a positive solution to the above problems when, in addition to the conditions above, the set on which \(a\) is positive is made of a finite number of pairwise disjoint intervals \(J_k\), \(g\) is superlinear at \(0\) and \(\liminf_{s \to + \infty}g(s)/s\) is larger that all the first eigenvalues of the Dirichlet problem with weight \(a\) on the intervals \(J_k\). This is in particular the case when \(g\) is superlinear at infinity. The sharpness of those conditions is discussed.