A variational principle for problems with a hint of convexity (Q1690931)

Let \(V\) be a real Banach space, \(\psi:V\to \mathbb R\cup \{+\infty\}\) be a proper, convex, lower semicontinuous function that is Gâteaux differentiable on a convex and weakly closed subset \(K\) of \(V\), and let \(\phi\in C^1(V,\mathbb R)\). In this paper, it is proved that a critical point \(u_0\in K\) of the functional \(I(u)=\psi_K(u)-\phi(u)\), \(I:V\to \mathbb R\cup\{+\infty\}\), solves the equation \(D\psi=D\phi\) if there exists \(v_0\in K\) such that \(D\psi(u_0)=D\phi(u_0)\). Here \(D\psi\) is the Gâteaux derivative of \(\psi\) and \(\psi_K\) is the restriction of \(\psi \) to \(K\). Three applications of the above variational principle are presented in the paper: the existence of a strong nontrivial solution of an elliptic problem with concave and convex nonlinearities, the existence of a strong solution of a nonhomogeneous semilinear elliptic problem to which the standard variational methods are not applicable, and the existence of radially increasing positive solutions to supercritical Neumann problems.