A strong maximum principle for some quasilinear elliptic equations (Q2266376)

The main result is the following maximum principle: if \(\beta\) is a real- valued, non-decreasing function of a real variable with \(\beta (0)=0\), and f is non-negative almost everywhere on \(\Omega \subset {\mathbb{R}}^ n\), then every non-negative weak solution of \(-\Delta u+\beta (u)=f\) is positive everywhere if and only if \(\int (\beta (s)s)^{-1/2}ds\) diverges at \(s=0+\). The result extends to certain quasi-linear equations.