Semilinear elliptic equations with Dirichlet operator and singular nonlinearities (Q350522)

In this paper, existence, uniqueness, regularity and stability results for elliptic equations of the type \(-A(u)=g(u)\mu\), \(u>0\) are proved. Here, \(A\) is the operator associated to a regular symmetric Dirichlet form \((\mathcal{E},D[\mathcal{E}])\) on \(L^2(E,m)\), where \(E\) is a separable locally compact metric space and \(m\) is a positive Radon measure on \(E\) with Supp\([m]=E\), \(g:(0,\infty)\rightarrow [0,\infty)\) is a continuous function satisfying \(c_1\leq g(t)t^\gamma\leq c_2\) in \((0,+\infty)\), for some \(c_1,c_2,\gamma>0\), and \(\mu\) is a nontrivial positive Borel measure on \(E\). For general operators \(A\), the variational definition of solution considered in previous papers dealing with uniformly elliptic operators in divergence form is not applicable. Thus, the author adopts a convenient probabilistic definition of solution for the problem \(-A(u)=g(u)\mu\), \(u>0\), and establishes existence and uniqueness results for this kind of solutions. When \(\mu\) is a smooth positive Borel measure, existence is proved under a certain property that must be satisfied by every nearly Borel set having positive capacity, and either an additional hypothesis on \((\mathcal{E},D[\mathcal{E}])\) (known as Meyer's hypothesis) or the non-increasingness of \(g\). In this latter case, the author establishes the uniqueness of the solution as well (proved actually for a combination of non-increasing nonlinearities of the type \(g(u)+h(u)\), with \(h\) satisfying \(c_1\leq h(t)t^\beta\leq c_2\), in \((0,\infty)\), for some \(\beta>0\)). Under certain regularity assumptions on the measure \(\mu\), the author also proves a regularity result for solutions \(u\) to the above equation. In particular, he obtains \(L^\infty\)-regularity and \(D_e(\mathcal{E})\)-regularity of solutions \(u\) (\(D_e(\mathcal{E})\) being the extended Dirichlet space associated to the form \((\mathcal{E},D[\mathcal{E}])\)) and related estimates of the corresponding norms given in terms of the constants \(c_1,c_2,\gamma\) and norms of the measure \(\mu\). All the proofs are based on approximation techniques. Finally, the author studies the stability of solutions of the equation \(-A(u_n)=g(u_n)\mu_n\), \(u_n>0\) under various kinds of convergence of the measure sequence \(\{\mu_n\}\), including a new definitions of convergence introduced by the author whose related stability result is used to get a more general existence theorem for the equation \(-A(u)=g(u)\mu\), \(u>0\), where \(\mu\) is a positive bounded Borel measure.