Elliptic problems with nonlinearities indefinite in sign (Q1815297)

The authors study the semilinear Dirichlet problem \[ -\Delta u= \lambda u+k(x) u^q-h(x)u^p\quad\text{ in } \Omega, \quad u=0 \text{ on } \partial\Omega. \tag{1} \] Here, \(\Omega \subset \mathbb{R}^n\), \(n\geq 3\), is a bounded, smooth domain, \(k,h\in L^1\) are nonnegative functions and \(1<q<p\). This problem is studied in a variational framework, i.e. the authors look for critical points of the functional \[ I_\lambda(u) = \int_\Omega {1\over 2} |\nabla u |^2-{\lambda \over 2} u^2-{k(x) \over q+1} |u |^{q+1} +{h(x) \over p+1} |u |^{p+1} dx \] on the Banach space \[ E= \Bigl\{u\in H^1_0 (\Omega) \mid\int_\Omega h(x) |u |^{p +1} < \infty\Bigr\}, \quad |u|^2_E=|\nabla u |^2_2+ \left(\int_\Omega h(x)|u|^{p+1} dx \right)^{{2 \over p+1}}. \] In the first part of the paper, the case \(\text{supp} k \subset \text{supp} h\) is considered and several existence theorems are proved. A typical result is the following: Let \(\lambda_1\) be the first eigenvalue of \(-\Delta\) in \(H^1_0 (\Omega)\). If \(h>0\) a.e. in \(\Omega\), and the quotient \(k^{p-1}/h^{q-1}\) satisfies certain integrability conditions, then there exists a number \(\lambda^* < \lambda_1\), such that for all \(\lambda > \lambda^*\) problem (1) admits a positive weak solution in \(E\). If in addition \(h,k \in L^\infty\), then problem (1) has at least two positive solutions \(0<u_1<u_2\) for \(\lambda \in (\lambda^*, \lambda_1)\). The second part of the paper is concerned with the case where the supports of \(k\) and \(h\) are disjoint. In this case it is assumed that \(q\) is subcritical \((q< (n+2)/(n-2))\) and an additional parameter is introduced into (1) \((h(x)\) is replaced by \(\gamma h(x))\). Again the authors prove several existence, multiplicity and non-existence results for various choices of \(\gamma\) and \(\lambda\).