Periodic parabolic problems with nonlinearities indefinite in sign

Let Ω ⊂ RN be a smooth bounded domain. We give sufficient conditions (which are also necessary in many cases) on two nonnegative functions a, b that are possibly discontinuous and unbounded for the existence of nonnegative solutions for semilinear Dirichlet periodic parabolic problems of the form Lu =λa (x, t) u p − b (x, t) u q in Ω × R, where 0 0. In some cases we also show the existence of solutions uλ in the interior of the positive cone and that uλ can be chosen such that λ → uλ is differentiable and increasing. A uniqueness theorem is also given in the case p ≤ q. All results remain valid for the corresponding elliptic problems