Existence of positive solutions for multi-point boundary value problem with strong singularity (Q708841)

This paper is devoted to the study of the Sturm-Liouville boundary value problem \[ (\varphi_p(u'(t)))'+h(t)f(t,u(t))=0\quad \text{a.e. }\,0<t<1 \] with boundary conditions \[ u(0)=\sum_{i=1}^{m-2}a_iu(\xi_i),\;u(1)=\sum_{i=1}^{m-2}b_iu(\xi_i), \] where \(\varphi_p(s)=|s|^{p-2}s\,(p>1)\) is the \(p\)-Laplacian, \(0<\xi_1<\xi_2<\dots<\xi_{m-2}\) are points and \(\sum_{i=1}^{m-2}a_i<1,\;\sum_{i=1}^{m-2}b_i<1\). \(h\) is a nonnegative measurable function which may be singular at \(t=0\) and/or \(t=1\). The nonlinearity \(f\in C([0,1]\times[0,\infty),[0,\infty))\) does not necessarily satisfy the Carathéodory but some assumptions on the ratio \(\frac{f(t,u)}{\varphi_p(u)}\) are assumed. Existence of single and multiple solutions is then obtained via computation of the fixed point index on cones of Banach spaces. The paper ends with an example.