An Introduction To Nonlinear Boundary Value Problems

A book on an advanced level that exposes the reader to the fascinating field of differential equations and provides a ready access to an up-to-date state of this art is of immense value. This book presents a variety of techniques that are employed in the theory of nonlinear boundary value problems. For example, the following are discussed: methods that involve differential inequalities; shooting and angular function techniques; functional analytic approaches; topological methods.

A survey of the development, analysis, and application of numerical techniques in solving nonlinear boundary value problems, this text presents numerical analysis as a working tool for physicists and engineers. Starting with a survey of accomplishments in the field, it explores initial and boundary value problems for ordinary differential equations, linear boundary value problems, and the numerical realization of parametric studies in nonlinear boundary value problems. The authors--Milan Kubicek, Professor at the Prague Institute of Chemical Technology, and Vladimir Hlavacek, Professor at the University of Buffalo--emphasize the description and straightforward application of numerical techniques rather than underlying theory. This approach reflects their extensive experience with the application of diverse numerical algorithms.

This self-contained textbook provides the basic, abstract tools used in nonlinear analysis and their applications to semilinear elliptic boundary value problems and displays how various approaches can easily be applied to a range of model cases. Complete with a preliminary chapter, an appendix that includes further results on weak derivatives, and chapter-by-chapter exercises, this book is a practical text for an introductory course or seminar on nonlinear functional analysis.

Overall, our object has been to provide an applications-oriented text that is reasonably self-contained. It has been used as the basis for a graduate-level course both at the University of Waterloo and at the Centro Studie Applicazioni in Tecnologie Avante, Bari, Italy. The text is aimed, in the main, at applied mathematicians with a strong interest in physical applications or at engineers working in theoretical mechanics.

This book focuses on nonlinear boundary value problems and the aspects of nonlinear analysis which are necessary to their study. The authors first give a comprehensive introduction to the many different classical methods from nonlinear analysis, variational principles, and Morse theory. They then provide a rigorous and detailed treatment of the relevant areas of nonlinear analysis with new applications to nonlinear boundary value problems for both ordinary and partial differential equations. Recent results on the existence and multiplicity of critical points for both smooth and nonsmooth functional, developments on the degree theory of monotone type operators, nonlinear maximum and comparison principles for p-Laplacian type operators, and new developments on nonlinear Neumann problems involving non-homogeneous differential operators appear for the first time in book form. The presentation is systematic, and an extensive bibliography and a remarks section at the end of each chapter highlight the text. This work will serve as an invaluable reference for researchers working in nonlinear analysis and partial differential equations as well as a useful tool for all those interested in the topics presented.

Starting in the early 1980s, people using the tools of nonsmooth analysis developed some remarkable nonsmooth extensions of the existing critical point theory. Until now, however, no one had gathered these tools and results together into a unified, systematic survey of these advances. This book fills that gap. It provides a complete presentation of nonsmooth critical point theory, then goes beyond it to study nonlinear second order boundary value problems. The authors do not limit their treatment to problems in variational form. They also examine in detail equations driven by the p-Laplacian, its generalizations, and their spectral properties, studying a wide variety of problems and illustrating the powerful tools of modern nonlinear analysis. The presentation includes many recent results, including some that were previously unpublished. Detailed appendices outline the fundamental mathematical tools used in the book, and a rich bibliography forms a guide to the relevant literature. Most books addressing critical point theory deal only with smooth problems, linear or semilinear problems, or consider only variational methods or the tools of nonlinear operators. Nonsmooth Critical Point Theory and Nonlinear Boundary Value Problems offers a comprehensive treatment of the subject that is up-to-date, self-contained, and rich in methods for a wide variety of problems.

"This book is devoted to the study of solutions of nonlinear ODE boundary value problems as nonlinear interpolation problems. In 1967, Lasota and Opial showed that, under suitable hypotheses, if solutions of a second-order nonlinear differential equation passing through two distinct points are unique, when they exist, then, in fact, a solution passing through two distinct points does exist. That result, coupled with the pioneering work of Philip Hartman on what was then called unrestricted n-parameter families has stimulated 50 years of rapid development in the study of solutions of boundary value problems as nonlinear interpolation problems. The purpose of this book is two-fold. First, the results that have been generated in the past 50 years are collected for the first time to produce a comprehensive and coherent treatment of what is now a well-defined area of study in the qualitative theory of ordinary differential equations. Second, methods and technical tools are sufficiently exposed so that the interested reader can contribute to the study of nonlinear interpolation"--

This volume contains expository lectures from the CBMS Regional Conference held at Harvey Mudd College, June 1977. The conference was supported by the National Science Foundation. The main theme of this monograph consists of applications to nonlinear differential equations of the author's coincidental degree. It includes an extensive bibliography covering many aspects of the modern theory of nonlinear differential equations and the theory of nonlinear analysis.