Quasilinear equations with natural growth in the gradients in spaces of Sobolev multipliers (Q1650879)

The paper deals with the quasilinear elliptic equation \[ \begin{cases} -\text{div}{\mathcal A}(x,\nabla u)={\mathcal B}(x,u,\nabla u)+\sigma,\,\,\,\text{in}\,\,\,\Omega,\\ u=0,\,\,\,\text{on}\,\,\,\partial\Omega,\end{cases}\leqno(1) \] where \(\Omega\) is a bounded domain in \(\mathbb{R}^n\), the operator \(\text{div}{\mathcal A}(x,\nabla u)\) is a Leray-Lions operator defined on \(W_0^{1,p}(\Omega)\), \(|{\mathcal B}(x,u,\nabla u)|\lesssim |\nabla u|^p,\,\,p>1\), and \(\sigma\) is a general distribution in \(\Omega\). The authors investigate the solutions of problem \((1)\) belonging to the class \({\mathcal C}\) of functions \(u\in W_0^{1,p}(\Omega)\) such that the inequality \[ \displaystyle\int_{\Omega}|\varphi|^p|\nabla u|^p\,dx\leq A\displaystyle\int_{\mathbb{R}^n}(|\nabla \varphi|^p+|\varphi|^p)\,dx,\,\,\,\forall\,\varphi\in C_c^{\infty}(\mathbb{R}^n),\leqno(2) \] holds with some \(A>0\). They determine the largest space \({\mathcal F}\) of data \(\sigma\) on \(\Omega\) so that whenever \(\sigma\in {\mathcal F}\) with a sufficiently small norm, then \((1)\) has a solution in \({\mathcal C}\). Namely, the authors prove that problem \((1)\) has a solution in \({\mathcal C}\) if and only if \(\sigma=\text{div} F\) with \(F\) a vector field from \(L^{\frac{p}{p-1}}(\Omega,\mathbb{R}^n)\) such that \(|F|^{\frac{1}{p-1}}\) satisfies the inequality \((2)\) (with \(|\nabla u|\) replaced by \(|F|^{\frac{1}{p-1}}\)). An application of the obtained results to the quasilinear equation of Schrödinger type \(-\Delta_pv=\sigma v^{p-1}\), \(v\geq 0\) in \(\Omega\) and \(v=1\) on \(\partial\Omega\) is also presented.