Existence of monotone or positive solutions of singular second-order sublinear differential equations (Q810230)

Both initial value problems and boundary value problems are considered for sublinear differential equations of the type \[ (1)\quad (p(x)y'(x))'=q(x)f(x,y(x),p(x)y'(x)),\quad x\in I, \] in an interval \(I=(0,a)\), where \(p\in C^ 1(I)\), \(q\in C(I)\), \(f\in C(\bar I\times {\mathbb{R}}\times {\mathbb{R}})\), p and q are positive in I, and f has a sublinear nonlinearity with respect to y. Equation (1) is allowed to be singular at the endpoints of I. The main theorems establish the existence of both positive solutions and monotone solutions in I of boundary value problems as well as initial value problems for (1). The various technical hypotheses for these theorems will not be reproduced here. The methods include a priori bounds and use of a fixed point theorem.