On the stability of a domain-wall brane model

We establish stability and nonstability results for a domain-wall brane model arising in classical field theory. In particular, we show the nonexistence of nontrivial bounded solutions on the real line for a coupled pair of parameter dependent linear second order ordinary differential equations for an open set of those parameters. Moreover, we establish the existence of nontrivial solutions for a hypersurface of the parameters. We use Fredholm theory for compact linear operators combined with the Lyapunov-Schmidt method to prove our results. The model is stable, respectively unstable, for those parameters for which the coupled system does not, respectively does, have nontrivial solutions.