The shooting method for some nonlinear Sturm-Liouville boundary value problems (Q910168)

The author uses the shooting method to prove existence and uniqueness of the solution for a semilinear Sturm-Liouville boundary value problem of the following kind: \(\{(p(x)u'(x))'+q(x)u(x)+f(x,u(x))=0\) for \(x\in [a,b]\) and \(u(a)\cdot \cos \alpha -p(a)u'(a)\cdot \sin \alpha =0,\quad u(b)\cdot \cos \beta -p(b)u'(b)\cdot \sin \beta =0\},\) where \(\alpha\in [0,\pi)\), \(\beta\in (0,\pi]\) fixed; p,q: [a,b]\(\to R\) continuous, \(p>0\) and f: [a,b]\(\times {\mathbb{R}}\to {\mathbb{R}}\) continuous. Like in a classical result of \textit{C. L. Dolph} [Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 66, 286-307 (1949; Zbl 0036.202)] existence and uniqueness depend on a special relation between \(\frac{\partial f}{\partial u}(x,u)\) and the consecutive eigenvalues of the related linear problem. Moreover the shooting method offers the possibility to get estimates for the solution because of the monotonicity of the so called shooting function.