On a class of critical Robin problems (Q2300656)

The authors study a parametric Robin problem \[ \begin{cases} -\text{div\,}(a(Du(z))) +\xi(z)|u(z)|^{p-2}u(z) = \lambda f(z,u(z))+k(z)|u(z)|^{p^*-2}u(z) \quad & \text{in }\Omega,\\ \frac{\partial u}{\partial n_a}+\beta(z)|u|^{p-2}u =0 & \text{on }\partial\Omega, \end{cases}\tag{1} \] where \(\lambda>0\) is a parameter, \(1<p<+\infty\) and \(p^*\) denotes the critical exponent related to \(p\). The map \(a(\cdot)\) is continous and strictly monotone while the potential function \(\xi\) belongs to \(L^\infty(\Omega)\). In the reaction (right-hand side of (1)), there are two interesting features. One is the presence of the critical term \(k(z)|u|^{p^*-2}u\) and the second is the parametric perturbation \(\lambda f(\cdot,u(\cdot))\) which is only locally defined. Using cut-off techniques, together with variational tools and critical groups, the authors show that, for all small values of the parameter, the problem has at least three nontrivial smooth solutions, all with sign information, which converge to zero in \(C^1(\overline{\Omega})\) as the parameter tends to zero.