SOLUTIONS TO M-POINT BOUNDARY VALUE PROBLEMS OF THIRD ORDER ORDINARY DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS AT RESONANCE

In this paper, we study the third order ordinary differential equation : $$x'(t)=f(t,x(t),x'(t),x'(t)),t{\in}(0,1)$$ subject to the boundary value conditions: $$x'(0)=x'(\xi),x'(1)=^{m-3}{\Sigma}_{i=1}{{\beta}x'({\eta}i),x'(1)=0}$$. Here ${\beta}_{i}{\in}R,\;^{m-3}{\Sigma}_{i=1}\;{\beta}_{i}\;=\;1,\;0<{\eta}_1<{\eta}_2<{\cdots}<{\eta}_{m-3}<1,\;0<\xi<1$. This is the case dimKer L = 2. When the ${\beta}_i$ have different signs, we prove some existence results for the m-point boundary value problem at resonance by use of the coincidence degree theory of Mawhin [12, 13]. Since all the existence results obtained in previous papers are for the case dimKerL = 1, our work is new.