Positive solutions for higher-order Lidstone boundary value problems. A new approach via Sperner's lemma (Q5948820)

The author considers the higher-order nonlinear Lidstone boundary value problem NEWLINE\[NEWLINEx^{(2n)}(t)=-f(t, x(t),\dots ,x^{(2i)}(t),\dots ,x^{(2n-2)}(t)),\;0\leq t\leq 1,\quad x^{(2i)}(0)=0=x^{(2i)}(1),NEWLINE\]NEWLINE and shows the existence of a solution satisfying \(x^{(2i)}(t)>0, 0<t<1,\) \(i=0,1,\dots ,n-1,\) provided that the function \(f\in ([0,1]\times \mathbb{R}_{+}^{n},\mathbb{R}_{+})\) is superlinear or sublinear. Other analogous results are proved. The main tool used is Sperner's lemma. This distinguished approach is different from others previously used to show related results (see for instance [\textit{L. H. Erbe} and \textit{H. Wang}, Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 120, No. 3, 743-748 (1994; Zbl 0802.34018); \textit{L. H. Erbe} and \textit{M. Tang}, Differ. Equ. Dyn. Syst. 4, No. 3-4, 313-320 (1996; Zbl 0868.35035), and \textit{J. M. Davis, P. W. Eloe} and \textit{J. Henderson}, J. Math. Anal. Appl. 237, No. 2, 710-720 (1999; Zbl 0935.34020)]).