Global persistence of the unit eigenvectors of perturbed eigenvalue problems in Hilbert spaces: the odd multiplicity case.

We study the persistence of eigenvalues and eigenvectors of perturbed eigenvalue problems in Hilbert spaces. We assume that the unperturbed problem has a nontrivial kernel of odd dimension and we prove a Rabinowitz-type global continuation result. The approach is topological, based on a notion of degree for oriented Fredholm maps of index zero between real differentiable Banach manifolds.