Families of 'first eigenfunctions' for semilinear elliptic eigenvalue problems (Q810305)

The authors consider the semilinear elliptic eigenvalue problem \[ Au=\lambda f(u)\text{ in } \Omega,\quad u=0\text{ on } \partial \Omega \] where \(Au=-\sum^{n}_{i,j=1}\frac{\partial}{\partial x_ i}(a_{ij}(x)\frac{\partial u}{\partial x_ j})\) is a uniformly elliptic operator, \(\Omega\) is a bounded smooth domain in \({\mathbb{R}}^ n\) and f is a continuous function such that \(f(s)=0\) for \(s\leq 0\), \(f(s)>0\) for \(s>0\) and \(g(s)=f(s)/s\) is decreasing. Set \(\mu_ 0=g(0)\) and \(\mu_{\infty}=g(\infty)\) and let \(\lambda_ 1\) denote the first eigenvalue of A with vanishing Dirichlet data. Then it is proved the existence of two continuous and monotone increasing maps \(\lambda: R_+\to (\lambda_ 1/\mu_ 0,\lambda_ 1/\mu_{\infty})\) and \(u: R_+\to H^ 1_ 0(\Omega)\) such that for all \(t>0\) \((\lambda_ t,u_ t)\) is a solution of the eigenvalue problem such that \(\| u\|^ 2_{H^ 1_ 0}=t\) and moreover any solution of the eigenvalue problem is of the form above. The proof is based on an abstract result for nonlinear eigenvalue problems in a variational setting.