An evolutionary property of the bifurcation curves for a positone problem with cubic nonlinearity (Q515032)

Consider the eigenvalue problem \[ \begin{gathered} u''(x)+\lambda f(u)=0\quad\text{for }-1<x<1,\\ u(-1)= u(1)= 0,\end{gathered}\tag{\(*\)} \] where \(f\) has the form \[ f(u)=-\varepsilon u^3+\sigma u^2+\tau u+\beta, \] \(\sigma\), \(\tau\), \(\beta\) are fixed constants. The authors study the influence of the parameter \(\varepsilon\) on the shape of the bifurcation curve \(S_2\) in the \((\lambda,\| u_\lambda\|)\)-plane connected with the appearance of positive solutions of \((*)\).