Existence and multiplicity of nontrivial solutions for quasilinear elliptic systems (Q2275504)

The authors consider the gradient elliptic system \[ \begin{aligned} -\Delta _p u = F_u (x,u,v) &\quad \text{in }\Omega,\\ -\Delta _q v= F_v (x,u,v) &\quad \text{in }\Omega \end{aligned} \tag{1} \] with the Dirichlet boundary condition for \(u\) and \(v\) on \(\partial \Omega \) where \(\Omega \subset \mathbb R^N\) \((N\geq 3)\) is a bounded domain, \(\Delta _p\) is the \(p\)-Laplacian, \(1<p,q <N\) and \(F\in C^1(\overline{\Omega}\times\mathbb R^2,\mathbb R)\). For the existence of nontrivial solutions of (1), they first consider the nonlinear eigenvalue problem \[ \begin{aligned} -\Delta_p u= \lambda|u|^{p-2}u+ \frac{\lambda }{\beta +1}|u|^\alpha|v|^\beta v &\quad \text{in }\Omega,\\ -\Delta _q v= \lambda|v|^{q-2}v+ \frac{\lambda }{\alpha +1}|u|^\alpha|v|^\beta u &\quad \text{in }\Omega ,\end{aligned}\tag{2} \] with the Dirichlet boundary condition for \(u\) and \(v\). \textit{N. M. Stravrakakis} and \textit{N. B. Zographopoulos} [Adv. Differ. Equ. 8, No. 3, 315--336 (2003; Zbl 1229.35068)] have proved that the first eigenvalue of (2) is simple and isolated with a first eigenfunction being strictly positive in \(\Omega \). The authors construct an unbounded sequence \(\{\lambda _k\}\) of minimax eigenvalues and discuss the nontrivial solution of (1) involving the higher eigenvalue of (2). When \(\lambda _{k-1}<\lambda _k\), they get a sufficient condition that the problem (1) has a nontrivial solution, and moreover when \(F(x,s,t)\) is even with respect to \((s,t)\), they also get a sufficient condition that the problem (1) has multiple pairs of nontrivial solutions. For the proof, they use the cohomological index of \textit{E. R. Fadell} and \textit{P. H. Rabiowitz} [Invent. Math. 45, 139--174 (1978; Zbl 0403.57001)].