Existence of positive solutions for a class of \( p \& q\) elliptic problem with critical exponent and discontinuous nonlinearity (Q2416328)

The authors prove an existence result for positive solutions to the following quasilinear problem \[ \begin{cases} -\operatorname{div}(a(|\nabla u|^p)|\nabla u|^{p-2}\nabla u)=f(u)+|u|^{q^*-2}u, &\text{in } \Omega,\\ u=0, &\text{on } \partial \Omega, \end{cases} \] where \(\Omega\) is a bounded domain in \(\mathbb{R}^N\), \(p\in [2,q^*)\), and \(a\in C([0,+\infty))\), \(f:\mathbb{R}\rightarrow \mathbb{R}\), with \(f(t)=0\) for \(t\leq 0\), are nonnegative functions such that, for some \(q\in [p,q^*)\), \(r\in (q,q^*)\), \(\alpha \in (0,1]\), \(\theta \in (p\alpha,q^*)\), \(C,\beta>0\), and \(k_0,k_1,k_2,k_3\geq 0\), the following holds: \[ k_0+ k_1t^{\frac{q-p}{p}}\leq a(t)\leq k_2+ k_3t^{\frac{q-p}{p}}, \quad \int_0^ta(s)ds\geq \alpha a(t)t,\tag{a} \] \[ 0\leq \theta \int_0^t f(s)ds \leq t\ \lim_{\epsilon\rightarrow 0}\ \mathop{\text{ess inf}}_{|t-s|<\varepsilon} f(s), \quad H(t-\beta)\leq f(t)\leq C(1+t^{r-1}),\tag{b} \] for all \(t\geq0\), and \[ \limsup_{t\rightarrow 0^*}t^{1-q}f(t)=0.\tag{c} \] Here, \(H\) denotes the Heaviside function. The function \(f\) is allowed to be discontinuous even at each point of an uncountable set. The proof is based on nonsmooth variational methods.