Unilateral global bifurcation phenomena and nodal solutions for \(p\)-Laplacian (Q657463)

The authors investigate the following one-dimensional \(p\)-Laplacian problem \[ \begin{aligned} -(\varphi_{p}(u'))' = \mu m(t) \varphi_{p}(u) + g(t, u; \mu),\quad & t \in (0,1), \\ u(0) = u(1) = 0, \quad \end{aligned} \] where \(\varphi_{p}(s) = |s|^{p-2} s\), \(1<p<+\infty\), \(\mu\) is a positive parameter, \(m(t) \geq 0\) and \(m(t)\not\equiv 0\) for \(t\in (0, 1)\) is a continuous weight function, \(g:(0,1) \times \mathbb{R} \times \mathbb{R} \to \mathbb{R}\) satisfies a Carathéodory condition in the first two variables and \[ \lim_{|s|\to 0} \frac{g(t,s;\mu)}{|s|^{p-1}} = 0 \] uniformly for a.e. \(t\in(0,1)\) and \(\mu\) on bounded sets. The authors show that \((\mu_{k}(p), 0)\) is a bifurcation point of the above problem and that there are two distinct unbounded continua, \(C_{k}^{+}\) and \(C_{k}^{-}\), consisting of the bifurcation branch \(C_{k}\) from \((\mu_{k}(p), 0)\), where \(\mu_{k}(p)\) is the \(k\)-th eigenvalue of the linear problem corresponding to the above problem. Based on this result, the authors investigate the existence of nodal solutions for the following one-dimensional \(p\)-Laplacian problem \[ \begin{aligned} (\varphi_{p}(u'))' + f(t, u) = 0,\quad & t\in(0,1), \\ u(0) = u(1) = 0,\quad \end{aligned} \] where \(f\in C([0, 1]\times\mathbb{R})\). In the higher dimensional case, \textit{P. Girg} and \textit{P. Takáč} proved a Dancer-type bifurcation theorem in [Ann. Henri Poincaré 9, No. 2, 275--327 (2008; Zbl 1145.35020)], in which the continua bifurcate from the principle eigenvalue for a quasilinear elliptic eigenvalue problem. Based on this results, the authors prove the existence of constant sign solutions for the following problem \[ \begin{aligned} -\text{div}(\varphi_{p}(\nabla u)) = f(x, u) \quad & \text{in }\Omega, \\ u = 0 \quad & \text{on }\partial\,\Omega, \end{aligned} \] where \(\Omega\in\mathbb{R}^{N}\) with \(N\geq 2\) is a bounded smooth domain and \(f\in C(\Omega\times\mathbb{R})\).