Nonlinear BVPs with functional parameters (Q1006098)

The author is concerned with the existence of solutions \(x(t)=(x_1(t),\dots,x_k(t))\) to the following system of \(k\)-Dirichlet problems (\(i\in\{1,\dots,k\}\)) \[ \begin{cases} -(l_i(t)| {x_i}'(t)|^{q_i-2}{x_i}'(t))'=\widetilde{{G_i}'}(t,x(t),z(t)),\quad 0<t<1,\\ x_i(0)=x_i(1)=0, \end{cases} \] where \(k\in\mathbb{N}\), \(q_i\in\mathbb{N}\setminus\{1\}\) are even and \(z\) is a fixed parameter. The nonlinearities are the partial derivatives of a certain real-valued function, \(l_i\in C[0,1]\cap C^1(0,1)\). In the first part of the paper, the author does not consider the \(z\)-parameter dependance and investigates the problem using a variational approach. The action functional associated with the system is \[ J(x)=\sum_{i=1}^{k}\int_0^1\frac{l_i(t)}{q_i}| {x_i}'(t)|^{q_i}dt-\int_0^1G(t,x(t))dt, \] with \(G=(G_1,\dots,G_k)\). To calculate the minimum of \(J\) on a set \(W\), the author develops a duality theory based on the Fenchel conjugate and defines \(J^*\) the dual functional (perturbation) of \(J\). Assumptions on \(G_i\) and refined estimates then lead to some duality results, to the computation of the infinimum of \(J\) and hence to a desired solution, a critical point of \(J\). The second part of the paper is devoted to the question of continuous dependance of solutions on the functional parameter \(z\). Then a nonexistence result is proved under superlinear growth condition on \(G(t,u,z)\) with respect to the second argument \(u\). The paper ends with some applications to the existence of radial solutions in an exterior domain \(\Omega=\{y\in\mathbb{R},\,\| y\|>1\}\) with two explicit illustrative examples \[ \begin{cases} -div(l_i(\| y\|)\nabla v_i)={F_i}'(\| y\|,v),\quad y\in\Omega,\\ v_i(y)=0\;\text{ for }\| y\|=1,\\ \lim_{\| y\|\to\infty}v_i(y)=0 \end{cases} \] and to the continuous dependance of solutions on boundary conditions in an annular domain \(\Omega_{r,R}=\{y\in\mathbb{R},\,r<\| y\|<R\}\): \[ \begin{cases} -div(l_i(\| y\|)\nabla v_i)={F_i}'(\| y\|,v),\quad y\in\Omega,\\ v_i(y)=0,\;\text{ for }\| y\|=r,\\ v_i(y)=\tilde{c_i}\;\text{ for }\| y\|=R.\end{cases} \] Note that these applications are the main motivation of the problem considered in this interesting paper.