Multiplicity of positive solutions for higher order Sturm-Liouville problems (Q5940642)

For an arbitrary positive integer \(n\), the authors establish two alternative sets of sufficient conditions on the continuous function \(f:[0,1]\times [0,\infty)\to [0,\infty)\) for there to be at least \(n\) positive solutions to the boundary value problem \[ \begin{aligned} (-1)^m y^{(2m)}(t)=f(t,y(t)),&\quad 0\leq t\leq 1,\\ \alpha y^{(2i)}(0)-\beta y^{(2i+1)}(0)=0, &\quad 0\leq i\leq m-1,\\ \gamma y^{(2i)}(1)+\delta y^{(2i+1)}(1)=0, &\quad 0\leq i\leq m-1,\end{aligned} \] where \(\alpha ,\beta ,\gamma ,\) and \(\delta\) are nonnegative constants with \(\gamma \beta +\alpha \gamma +\alpha \delta >0\). They also obtain sufficient conditions for the existence of an arbitrary number of symmetric positive solutions and establish inequalities satisfied by the norms of these solutions.