A singular elliptic boundary value problem (Q1344025)

The authors consider the singular semilinear elliptic boundary value problem in the unit ball \(B\subset \mathbb{R}^ n\): \((*)\) \(\Delta u(x)= f(u(x))\) for \(x\in B\), \(u| \partial B=\infty\). They show (existence and) uniqueness of a solution \(u\) to \((*)\), where \(f\) is subject to the following conditions: \(f\in C^ 1 (\mathbb{R})\), \(f\not\equiv 0\), \(f\geq 0\), \(f'(s) \geq 0\), \(f'\) is nondecreasing for large \(s\), \(\liminf_{s\to\infty} f'(s)/r \sqrt {F(s)} >0\), where \(F(s)= \int_ c^ s f(\sigma) d\sigma\), \(c\) such that \(f(c)>0\). Moreover \(u\) is shown to behave near the boundary \(\partial B\) like a solution of \(w'' (r)= f(w(r))\), \(w(r)\to \infty\) as \(r\nearrow 1\). This comparison result is also the key argument for their proof of the uniqueness theorem. For the existence part, they refer to arguments by \textit{J. B. Keller} [Commun. Pure Appl. Math. 10, 503-510 (1957; Zbl 0090.318)]. The authors compare their results with recent ones by \textit{V. A. Kondrat'ev} and \textit{V. A. Nikishkin} [Differ. Eq. 26, 345-348 (1990; Zbl 0706.35054)] and \textit{C. Bandle} and \textit{M. Marcus} [J. Anal. Math. 58, 9-24 (1992; Zbl 0802.35038)]. On the one hand in the present paper the domain is very special, on the other hand it is possible to treat e.g. nonlinearities with \(f(0) \neq 0\), which are not covered by the papers mentioned above.