Existence under lack of convexity. (Q2059007)

In this paper the author studies the existence of critical points and hence solutions of related boundary value problem for the functional \(E\) defined on \(H_{0}^{1}\left(\Omega\right)\) \[E(u)=\int_{\Omega}[\phi(\nabla u(x))+\psi(u(x))]dx,\] where \(\Omega\subset\mathbb{R}^{N}\) is a bounded domain, and where the functions \(\phi:\mathbb{R}^{N}\rightarrow\mathbb{R}\), \(\psi:\mathbb{R}\rightarrow\mathbb{R}\) are smooth and subject to some quadratic growth; \(\phi\) is piece-wise analytic. The author is concerned with the case when function \(\phi\) is not convex. In this case, when functional is \(E\) is additionally coercive, one cannot apply the two standard approaches to show existence of critical points. Namely when \(\phi\) is not convex one cannot prove the existence of global minimizers through the direct method and weak lower semicontinuity; or else, one cannot apply the existence tool which stems from the Ekeland Variational Principle and which relies on the Palais-Smale condition. The author proposes some strategy to overcome this difficulty and shows that for any \(u_{0}\in H_{0}^{1}\left(\Omega\right)\) the problem \[-\operatorname{div}\phi(\nabla u(x))+\nabla\psi(u(x))=0\text{, }\left. u\right\vert_{\partial\Omega}=u_{0}\] has a solution. Among the arguments used it is given some approximation scheme and the following is exploited: for each \(Z\in\mathbb{R}^{N}\) \(\{\nabla\phi=Z\}\), is discrete or empty.