Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

On Multiple Solutions Of A Nonlinear Dirichlet Problem, Alfonso Castro, Jorge Cossio, John M. Neuberger

All HMC Faculty Publications and Research

We prove that a semilinear elliptic boundary value problem has five solutions when the range of the derivative of the nonlinearity includes at least the first two eigenvalues. We also prove that if the region is a ball the semilinear elliptic problem has two solutions that change sign and are nonradial.

Positive Solution Curves Of Semipositone Problems With Concave Nonlinearities, Alfonso Castro, Sudhasree Gadam, Ratnasingham Shivaji

All HMC Faculty Publications and Research

We consider the positive solutions to the semilinear equation:

-Δu(x) = λf(u(x)) for x ∈ Ω

u(x) = 0 for x ∈ ∂Ω

where Ω denotes a smooth bounded region in R^N (N > 1) and λ > 0. Here f :[0, ∞)→R is assumed to be monotonically increasing, concave and such that f(0) < 0 (semipositone). Assuming that f'(∞) ≡ lim t→∞ f'(t) > 0, we establish the stability and uniqueness of large positive solutions in terms of (f(t)/t)'. When Ω is a ball, we determine the exact number of positive solutions for each λ > 0. We also obtain the geometry of the branches of positive solutions completely and establish how …