Maximum and comparison principles for operators involving the \(p\)-Laplacian (Q1380309)

This paper is concerned with positivity properties of the operator \[ {\mathfrak L}_{p,a}: =-\Delta_p u+a (\cdot)| u|^{p-2} u,\;p>1, \] under homogeneous Dirichlet conditions in the bounded smooth domain \(\Omega\subset \mathbb{R}^n\). Here \(-\Delta_pu =-\text{div} (|\nabla u|^{p-2} \nabla u)\) is the \(p\)-Laplace operator and \(a(\cdot)\in L^\infty (\Omega)\). While positivity and even comparison results are well known if \(a\geq 0\) [see \textit{P. Tolksdorff}, J. Differ. Equations 51, 126-150 (1984; Zbl 0522.35018)], the authors are mainly interested in the case \(a\ngeq 0\). Among a lot of other results they show that the validity of a strong positivity result \(0\not \equiv {\mathfrak L}_{p,a} u\geq 0\) in \(\Omega\), \(u|\partial \Omega \geq 0\Rightarrow u>0\) in \(\Omega\) is equivalent to the positivity of the first eigenvalue \[ \lambda_{1,p}(a) {\overset{def}=} \inf\biggl\{ \int_\Omega\bigl( | \nabla u|^p+ a| u|^p\bigr) dx:u\in W_0^{1,p} (\Omega),\;\int_\Omega| u|^pdx =1\biggr\}>0. \]