Sturm-Liouville problems on time scales with separated boundary conditions (Q941108)

The paper considers Sturm-Liouville problems on time scales, starting from a result of \textit{R.P. Agarwal, M. Bohner} and \textit{P.J.Y. Wong} on eigenvalue existence and the zeros of the associated eigenfunctions [Appl. Math. Comput. 99, No. 2-3, 153--166 (1999; Zbl 0938.34015)]. In the paper, a more general form of the problem is considered, namely, \[ -(py^{\triangle})^{\triangle}+qy^{\sigma}=\lambda wy^{\sigma}\quad\text{on } [a,b]\cap T \] with the following separated boundary conditions \[ \begin{aligned} R_a(y)&:=\cos\alpha y - \sin\alpha(py^{\triangle})| _{\rho(\alpha)}=0,\quad \alpha\in[\hat{0},\hat{\pi}] \\ R_b(y)&:=\cos\beta y - \sin\beta(py^{\triangle})| _b = 0,\quad \beta\in(0,\pi] \end{aligned} \] and under the following assumptions (I) \(p,\;q,\;w:[\rho(a),\sigma(b)]\cap T\) are right dense continuous, \(p,w>0\); (II) \[ \hat{0} = 0,\quad\text{if }\rho(a) = a, \] \[ \hat{0} = -\tan^{-1}{{\mu(\rho(0))}\over{p(\rho(a))}},\quad \rho(a)<a,\quad \hat{\pi}=\pi+\hat{0}; \] (III) \(a\) right scattered \(\Rightarrow\) \(a\) left scattered and \(b\) left scattered \(\Rightarrow\) \(b\) right scattered. The main results of the paper concern the number of eigenvalues of this problem which are simple, bounded below and the associated functions have as many generalized zeros on \((a,b)\) as is the position of the eigenvalue in their sequence where the smallest is \(\lambda_0\). The same topics are followed for these cases when the above assumptions are relaxed.