Asymmetric \((p,2)\)-equations, superlinear at \(+\infty\) resonant at \(-\infty\) (Q2360539)

This paper is concerned with the following Dirichlet boundary value problem of the so-called \((p, 2)\)-equation, that is, a nonlinear elliptic equation with the operator \(-\Delta_p-\Delta\), \[ -\Delta_p u(x)-\Delta u(x) = f(x,u), \quad x\in \Omega, \quad u|_{\partial \Omega} =0, \tag{P} \] where \(\Delta_p u=\operatorname{div}(|\nabla u|^{p-2}\nabla u)\), \(\Omega \subset \mathbb R^N\) is a bounded domain with \(C^2\)-boundary \(\partial \Omega\), \(f(x, 0) = 0\), \(f(x, \cdot) \in C^1(\mathbb R)\). Moreover, \(f(x,t) \sim | t|^{p-2}t\) at \(-\infty\) and may be resonant with respect to the principal eigenvalue of \(-\Delta_p\), and \(f(x,t)\) goes faster than \( t^{p-1}\) at \(+\infty\) but does not satisfy the usual Ambrosetti-Rabinowitz condition. By using variational methods including the mountain pass theorem and Morse theory, the authors obtain five nontrivial solutions (one negative, two positive, one sign-changing and one having no sign information) in \(W_0^{1,p}(\Omega)\) for the above problem.