Some extensions of the mountain pass lemma (Q1174384)

This article deals with some variants of the classical mountain pass lemma. In the first part the following result is obtained: if \(f: \mathbb{E}\to\mathbb{R}\) is a \(C^ 1\) smooth functional with \(PS\)-condition on a real Banach space \(\mathbb{E}\), \(x_ 0,x_ 1\in\mathbb{E}\), \({\mathcal D}\) is an open neighborhood, \(x_ 0,x_ 1\not\in{\mathcal D}\), \(\inf f(\partial{\mathcal D})\geq\max\{f(x_ 0),f(x_ 1)\}\) then \(c=\inf_{h(0)=x_ 0, h(1)=x_ 1} \max_{t} f(h(t))\) is a critical value of \(f\) and moreover if \(c=\inf f(\partial{\mathcal D})\) then \(\partial{\mathcal D}\cap(\{x:\;f(x)=c,\;f'(x)=0\}\backslash\{x_ 0,x_ 1\})\neq\emptyset\). In the second part some mountain pass lemma for special functionals on closed convex sets in Hilbert space is improved. The applications to Hammerstein integral equations are given.