A necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of positive solutions to singular sublinear three-point boundary value problems (Q876608)

The authors state and prove necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of \(C^1[0, 1]\) positive solutions to the nonlocal three-point boundary value problem \[ -x'' = f(t, x(t)), \quad 0 < t < 1, \] \[ x(0) = a x(\eta), \quad x(1) = 0, \quad 0 < a < 1, \;0 < \eta < 1. \] In section 4, they extend their results to solutions of \[ -x'' = f(t, x(t)), x(0) = 0, x(1) = a x(\eta). \] Their main assumption on the nonlinear term \(f\) is ``(H) \(f(t, x): (0, 1) \times [0, +\infty) \to [0, +\infty)\) is continuous, nondecreasing on \(x\) for each fixed \(t \in (0, 1)\), and there exists a constant \(q \in (0, 1)\), such that \[ f(t, cx) \geq c^qf(t, x) \forall c \in (0, 1), (t, x) \in (0, 1) \times (0, +\infty)\text{.''} \] In addition, the authors prove that the solution is unique as well as show that a sequence of iterations converges uniformly to the unique solution. This paper is very technical and requires careful reading. While the manuscript is marred by poor editing, the paper will nonetheless be useful to researchers studying the existence and uniqueness of nonlocal three-point boundary value problems.