Existence and multiplicity of nontrivial solutions in semilinear critical problems of fourth order (Q1907687)

The authors study the semilinear elliptic problem of fourth order \[ \Delta^2 u= \lambda|u|^{q- 2}u+ |u|^{p- 2}u\quad\text{in}\quad \Omega\subset \mathbb{R}^n,\tag{1} \] with boundary conditions \[ u|_{\partial\Omega}= \partial u/\partial n|_{\partial\Omega}= 0,\quad\text{or}\quad (3)\quad u|_{\partial\Omega}= \Delta u|_{\partial\Omega}= 0,\tag{2} \] in a smooth bounded domain \(\Omega\), \(n> 4\), \(1< q< 2\), \(\lambda> 0\), \(p= 2n/(n- 4)\) is the critical Sobolev exponent for the embedding \(W^{2,2}\to L^p\). Using the local Palais-Smale condition and index theory, they show that for \(0< \lambda< A\), there are infinitely many solutions to both problems (1), (2) and (1), (3). The existence of at least one solution is also shown for problem (1), (3) in the supercritical case \(p> 2n/(n- 4)\), where the upper and lower solutions method is used.