A new topological degree theory for perturbations of demicontinuous operators and applications to nonlinear equations with nonmonotone nonlinearities (Q503499)

The author develops a topological degree theory for a class of operators having the structure \(L+T+C\) and acting either (i) from a reflexive locally uniformly convex Banach space \(X\) to its dual \(X^*\) -- also assumed to be locally uniformly convex, or (ii) from a Hilbert space \(H\) to itself. Here, basically \(L\) is linear, closed, with compact inverse and either surjective in case (i) or with closed range, densely defined and self-adjoint in case (ii), the (set-valued) operator \(T\) is maximal monotone and satisfies a lower boundedness type condition, while \(C\) is bounded demicontinuous without being necessarily pseudomonotone. The construction of the degree theory for such a class of operators relies on an extension of the definition of a pseudomonotone homotopy of maximal monotone operators due to \textit{F. E. Browder} [Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 80, 1771--1773 (1983; Zbl 0533.47051); Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 80, 2405--2407 (1983; Zbl 0533.47052)]. This allows the author, by making use of the Yosida approximants of \(T\), to define a new topological degree mapping by means of the Leray-Schauder degree of compact perturbations of the identity. To illustrate the applicability of the theory, some abstract surjectivity theorems are presented and some concrete examples are provided proving the existence of weak solutions for some nonlinear parabolic and hyperbolic equations.