Existence and uniqueness of a nontrivial solution for a class of third-order nonlinear p -Laplacian m -point eigenvalue problems on time scales Original Research Article

In this paper, we study the existence and uniqueness of a nontrivial solution for the following third-order pp-Laplacian mm-point eigenvalue problems on time scales: View the MathML source{(ϕp(uΔ∇))∇+λf(t,u(t),uΔ(t))=0,t∈(0,T),αu(0)−βuΔ(0)=0,u(T)=∑i=1m−2aiu(ξi),uΔ∇(0)=0, Turn MathJax on where ϕp(s)ϕp(s) is pp-Laplacian operator, i.e., View the MathML sourceϕp(s)=|s|p−2s,p>1,ϕp−1=ϕq,1p+1q=1,λ>0 is a parameter, 0<ξ1<⋯<ξm−2<ρ(T)0<ξ1<⋯<ξm−2<ρ(T). We obtain several sufficient conditions of the existence and uniqueness of nontrivial solution of the above eigenvalue problems when λλ is in some interval. Our approach is based on the Leray–Schauder nonlinear alternative. As an application, some examples to demonstrate our results are given. The conditions we used in the paper are different from those in [Z.C. Hao, L. Debnath, On eigenvalue intervals and eigenfunctions of fourth-order singular boundary value problems, Appl. Math. Lett. 18 (2005) 543–553; D. Jiang, R.P. Agarwal, A uniqueness and existence theorem for a singular third-order boundary value problem on [0,+1)[0,+1), Appl. Math. Lett. 15 (2002) 445–451; S.H. Li, Positive solutions of nonlinear singular third-order two-point boundary value problem, J. Math. Anal. Appl. 323 (2006) 413–425; Z. Liu, J.S. Ume, D.R. Anderson, S.M. Kang, Twin monotone positive solutions to a singular nonlinear third-order differential equation, J. Math. Anal. Appl. 334 (2007) 299–313; Q. Yao, Positive solutions to a special singular second-order boundary value problem, Math. Comput. Model. (in press); Q. Yao, Successive iteration of positive solution for a discontinuous third-order boundary value problem, Comput. Math. Appl. 53 (2007) 741–749].