Global bifurcation in variational inequalities: applications to obstacle and unilateral problems (Q677070)

The book describes a general topological degree approach to a class of bifurcation problems for variational inequalities. This approach is a useful consideration which leads to new results or other proofs of known results. The main problem is here to extend results concerning topological degree to variational inequalities. More precisely, the problem is defined by \(u\in V:\;\langle A(u)-B(u,\lambda), v-u\rangle+j(v)-j(u) \geq0\) for all \(v\in V\), where \(V\) is a reflexive Banach space, \(A:\;V\to V^\ast\) a monotone coercive operator, \(B:\;V\times {\mathbb{R}}\to V^\ast\) a completely continuous mapping, \(j:\;V\to {\mathbb{R}}\cup\{\infty\}\) a proper, convex, lower semicontinuous functional and \(\lambda\) denotes the real eigenvalue parameter. The results are applied to buckling problems for plates and to \(p\)-Laplacian type problems, in particular. To my knowledge there is no book about this subject, which is not a completely developed theory already. A lot of problems are open yet. Thus the book could help students to start their own investigations. The book is well organized and contains many new results of the authors. The original idea which led to variational inequalities with an eigenvalue parameter was the following consideration. Let \(H\) be a real Hilbert space and \(a(u,v),\;b(u,v)\) denote two real symmetric and bounded bilinear forms defined on \(H\). Under additional assumptions on the bilinear forms \(a,\;b\) the minimum problem for the Rayleigh quotient (*) \(\lambda_0=\min_{v\in H\setminus\{0\}} a(v,v)/b(v,v)\) has a solution. The real number \(\lambda_0\) is an eigenvalue of the problem \(u\in H:\;a(u,v)=\lambda b(u,v)\) for all \(v\in H\). If one replaces in (*) \(H\) by a closed convex cone \(C\) with the vertex at the zero of \(H\), then the problem (*) has a solution \(u\in C\) too and this \(u\) is a solution of the variational inequality \(u\in C:\;a(u,v-u)\geq\lambda_0b(u,v-u)\) for all \(v\in C\). The contents of the book is organized as follows: 1. Introduction, 2. Some Auxiliary Results, 3. Bifurcation in Hilbert Spaces, 4. Degree Calculations -- The Hilbert Space Case, 5. Bifurcation from Infinity in Hilbert Spaces, 6. Bifurcation in Banach Spaces, 7. Bifurcation from Infinity in Banach Spaces.