A sharp eigenvalue theorem for fractional elliptic equations (Q2357009)

This paper is to show a characterization result on the existence of a positive solution for fractional elliptic equations. The authors use the fractional Laplacian operator, having some technical advantages to overcome certain mathematical difficulties in proving their result. They first establish an original critical point theorem on Hilbert spaces and successively obtain a characterization result by this abstract tool. The results in this paper are mainly inspired by the pioneering work on sublinear elliptic equations by \textit{H. Brézis} and \textit{L. Oswald} [Nonlinear Anal., Theory Methods Appl. 10, 55--64 (1986; Zbl 0593.35045)]. The methods established by \textit{L. Caffarelli} and \textit{L. Silvestre} [Commun. Partial Differ. Equations 32, No. 8, 1245--1260 (2007; Zbl 1143.26002)] are also used in this paper. The result obtained in this paper is interesting and can be regarded as an elliptic version, for fractional equations, of a characterization result given by \textit{B. Ricceri} [J. Nonlinear Convex Anal. 16, No. 1, 79--82 (2015; Zbl 1310.34027)].