Positive solutions for a class of singular Dirichlet problems (Q2323837)

In this paper the authors study the following parametric singular Dirichlet problem \[ \begin{cases} -\Delta u(z) +u(z)^{-\gamma}=\lambda f(z,u(z))\quad & \text{in }\Omega,\\ u(z)=0 & \text{on }\partial\Omega,\\ u>0, \ 0<\gamma<1, \end{cases}\tag{1} \] where \(\Omega \subseteq \mathbb{R}^N\) is a bounded domain with a \(C^2\)-boundary \(\partial\Omega\), \(\lambda\) is a positive parameter and \(f: \Omega\times \mathbb{R}\to\mathbb{R}\) is a Carathéodory function such that \(f(z,\cdot)\) exhibits superlinear growth near \(+\infty\) but it need not satisfy the Ambrosetti-Rabinowitz condition. The singular term \(u^{-\gamma}\) appears on the left-hand side of the equation which is in contrast to almost all previous works in this direction. The authors study the precise dependence of the set of positive solutions of problem (1) with respect to the parameter \(\lambda>0\). In this direction, they show that there exists a critical parameter value \(\lambda^*>0\) such that \begin{itemize} \item for all \(\lambda>\lambda^*\), problem (1) has at least two positive smooth solutions; \item for all \(\lambda \in (0,\lambda^*)\), problem (1) has no positive solutions. \end{itemize} It is an open problem what happens in the critical case \(\lambda=\lambda^*\).