two-point boundary value problems for a class of second-order ordinary differential equations两点边值问题的二阶常微分方程.pdf

Hindawi Publishing Corporation International Journal of Mathematics and Mathematical Sciences Volume 2012, Article ID 794040, 13 pages doi:10.1155/2012/794040 Research Article Two-Point Boundary Value Problems for a Class of Second-Order Ordinary Differential Equations Indranil SenGupta1 and Maria C. Mariani2 1 Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Texas at El Paso, Bell Hall 316, El Paso, TX 79968-0514, USA 2 Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Texas at El Paso, Bell Hall 124, El Paso, TX 79968-0514, USA Correspondence should be addressed to Indranil SenGupta, isengupta@ Received 14 October 2011; Accepted 27 December 2011 Academic Editor: Martin Bohner Copyright q 2012 I. SenGupta and M. C. Mariani. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. We study the general semilinear second-order ODE u g t, u, u 0 under different two- point boundary conditions. Using the method of upper and lower solutions, we obtain an existence result. Moreover, under a growth condition on g, we prove that the set of solutions of u g t, u, u 0 is homeomorphic to the two-dimensional real space. 1. Introduction The Dirichlet problem for the semilinear second-order ODE u g t, u, u 0 1.1 has been studied by many authors from the pioneering work of Picard 1, who proved the existence of a solution by an application of the well-known method of successive approxi- mations under a Lipschitz condition on g and a smallness