An application of Lévy-Caccioppoli's global inversion theorem to a boundary value problem for the Soret effect (Q628614)

A system of nonlinear elliptic equations describing concentration and temperature in a mixture of fluids is studied. By searching for ``functional solutions'', the three-dimensional problem is reduced to a nonlinear eigenvalue problem for a first-order differential equation on an interval. Existence and uniqueness of a solution to this problem is proved by employing Lévy-Caccioppoli's global inversion theorem.