On a perturbed \(p(x)\)-Laplacian problem in bounded and unbounded domains (Q1947264)

The authors of this paper study a quasilinear elliptic equation driven by the \(p(x)\)-Laplace operator, both in bounded and unbounded domains. Precisely, they consider the following problems \[ \begin{cases} -\Delta_{p(x)} u + |u|^{p(x)-2}u=f(x,u)\quad \text{in}\,\,\, \Omega\\ \frac{\partial u}{\partial \nu}=0\quad \text{on}\,\,\, \partial\Omega\\ u\in W^{1,p(x)}(\Omega), \end{cases} \] where \(\Omega \subset \mathbb R^n\) is a bounded smooth domain and \(\nu\) is the outward unit normal to \(\partial \Omega\), and \[ \begin{cases} -\Delta_{p(x)} u + |u|^{p(x)-2}u=f(x,u)\quad \text{in}\,\,\, \mathbb R^n,\\ u\in W^{1,p(x)}(\mathbb R^n). \end{cases} \] In both problems \(\Delta_{p(x)} u:=\text{div}(|\nabla u|^{p(x)-2}\nabla u)\) is the \(p(x)\)-Laplace operator, while the exponent~\(p(x)\) is such that \[ 1<p^-:=\inf_{x\in \Omega}p(x)\leq p^+:=\sup_{x\in \Omega}p(x)<\min\Big\{n, \frac{np^-}{n-p^-}\Big\} \] and the nonlinearity~\(f\) is a Carathéodory function which satisfies subcritical growth conditions. In the main results of the paper, the authors prove the existence of four weak solutions for both problems, using variational methods.