Journal of Inequalities and Applications 
Volume 6 (2001), Issue 5, Pages 483-506
doi:10.1155/S1025583401000303

Bifurcation of solutions of nonlinear Sturm–Liouville problems

Jacek Gulgowski

Institute of Mathematics, University of Gdańsk, ul. Wita Stwosza 57, Gdańsk 80-952, Poland

Received 15 July 1999; Revised 1 March 2000

Abstract

A global bifurcation theorem for the following nonlinear Sturm–Liouville problem is given {u″(t)=−h(λ,t,u(t),u′(t)),  a.e. on (0,1)u(0)cosη−u′(0)sinη=0  (∗)u(1)cosζ+u′(1)sinζ=0  with η,ζ∈[0,π2].

Moreover we give various versions of existence theorems for boundary value problems {u″(t)=−g(t,u(t),u′(t)),  a.e. on (0,1)u(0)cosη−u′(0)sinη=0  (∗∗)u(1)cosζ+u′(1)sinζ=0.The main idea of these proofs is studying properties of an unbounded connected subset of the set of all nontrivial solutions of the nonlinear spectral problem (∗), associated with the boundary value problem (∗∗), in such a way that h(1,⋅,⋅,⋅)=g.