Existence and comparison of Green kernels for some elliptic operators on \((0, \infty )\) (Q735078)

The authors consider the Dirichlet boundary problem \((P_{\lambda})\): \[ L_{\lambda}(u(x))=-f(x), x\in (0,\infty);\quad u(0)=0, \lim_{x\rightarrow \infty } u(x)=0,\tag{\({P_\lambda}\)} \] where \[ L_{\lambda}=\frac{1}{A}\;\frac{d}{dx}\left(A\frac{d}{dx}\right)+\lambda g\;\frac{d}{dx}-q; \] \(\lambda\geq 0;\) \(q\geq 0\) and continuous on \([0,\infty);\) \(g\geq 0\) and continuous on \((0,\infty);\) \(A\) is a smooth function on \([0,\infty)\) with \(A>0\) on \((0,\infty)\) and \(\lim_{x\rightarrow 0 } \frac{1}{A(x)}\int_{0}^{x}A(s)ds=0.\) In the case \(q\equiv 0,\) the authors show that \((P_{\lambda})\) has a solution if and only if the functions \(1/B_{\lambda}(x)\) and \(B_{\lambda}(x)f(x)\psi_{\lambda}(x)\) are integrable on \([0,\infty)\), where \[ B_{\lambda}(x):=A(x)e^{\lambda \int_{1}^{\infty}g(s)ds};\quad \psi_{\lambda}(x):=\frac{1}{\int_{0}^{\infty} \frac{1}{B_{\lambda}(s)}ds}\int_{x}^{\infty}\frac{1}{B_{\lambda}(s)}\,ds). \] For \(q \neq 0,\) they obtain several necessary or sufficient conditions for the existence of solutions of \((P_\lambda)\). In the two cases, they also describe the solution in terms of an appropriate Green's function \(G_\lambda\). Finally, in the last section they prove that the solutions of \((P_0)\) and \((P_\lambda)\) are comparable if and only if \(g\) is integrable on \([0,\infty).\)