Existence and uniqueness of positive solutions to a class of semilinear elliptic systems. (Q1856769)

The authors study the following semilinear elliptic systems \[ -\Delta u=g(x,u),\;x\in\Omega,\quad -\Delta v=f(x,u),\;x\in\Omega, \] \[ u,v>0 \text{ in }\Omega,\;u=v=0,\;x\in\partial\Omega, \] where \(\Omega \subset\mathbb{R}^n\) is a bounded, smooth and convex domain. They give four conditions on \(f\) and \(g\). (A1) \(f(x,s)\), \(g(x,s)\) are continuous and positive, and \(\displaystyle\lim_{s\to 0+}\frac{f(x,s)} {s}>0\), \(\displaystyle\lim_{s\to 0+} \frac{g(x,s)}{s}>0\); (A2) \(\displaystyle\frac{f(x,s)}{s}\), \(\displaystyle\frac {g(x,s)}{s}\) are decreasing functions; (A3) \(f(x,s)\), \(g(x,s)\) are strictly increasing in \(s\); (A4) \(f(x,s)\), \(g(x,s)\) are decreasing in \(s\). (A5) \(M< \lambda_1\), where \(\displaystyle M=\max\left(\left\|\lim_{s\to+\infty} \frac{f(x,s)} {s} \right\|,\;\left\|\lim_{s\to +\infty}\frac{g(x,s)}{s}\right\|\right)\) and \(\lambda_1\) denotes the first Dirichlet eigenvalue. Then they prove: under (A1), (AS2) and (A5), there exists at least one solution; under (A1), (A2) and (A3), there exists at most one solution; under (A1) and (A4), if there exists a solution, then (A5) holds. The main idea is by continuation in a certain Banach space. The results are similar to and generalize those of \textit{R. Dalmasso} [Nonlinear Anal. Theory Methods Appl. 39, 559--568 (2000; Zbl 0940.35091)]