Bifurcation at isolated singular points for a degenerate elliptic eigenvalue problem (Q2349073)

In the open, bounded subset of \(\mathbb{R}^N\), \(N\geq 3\), with the Lipschitz continuous boundary \(\partial \Omega\) the boundary value problem \[ -\nabla\cdot A(x)\nabla u + V(x)u + n(x,\nabla u) + g(x, u) = \lambda\{u + h(x, u)\} \text{ in } \Omega,\;u=0 \text{ on } \partial \Omega \tag{1} \] is considered, where the nonlinear terms are of higher order near \(0\) in the sense that \[ \lim_{\xi \to 0}\frac{n(x,\xi)}{|\xi|}=\lim_{s \to 0}\frac{g(x,s)}{s}=\lim_{s \to 0}\frac{h(x,s)}{s}= 0 \] for all \(x \in \Omega\). The differential operator is degenerate elliptic according to the requirement \(A \in C(\overline{\Omega})\) with \(A(x) > 0\) for all \(x\neq 0\) and \(\lim_{x \to 0}\frac{A(x)}{|x|^2}=a\) for some \(a\in (0, \infty)\). Hence there exist constants \(C_2 \geq C_1> 0\) such that \(C_1|x|^2 \leq A(x)\leq C_2|x|^2\) for all \(x \in \overline{\Omega}\). It is supposed that \( V \in L^{\infty}(\Omega)\) and \(\lim_{x \to 0} V(x) = V_0\) exists. The author looks for weak solutions of (1) belonging to the space \[ H_A =\left\{u\in L^2(\Omega) ; \int _{\Omega}A|\nabla u|^2dx <\infty \text{ and } u=0 \text{ on } \partial \Omega\right\}, \] which is a Hilbert space with \(\left<u,v\right>_A=\int _{\mathbb{R}^N}A\nabla u\cdot \nabla v dx\). The points are considered in which non-trivial solutions of (1) bifurcate in \(\mathbb{R}\times H_A\) from the line of trivial solutions \(\mathbb{R}\times \{0\}\). In comparison with [\textit{G. Evéquoz} and \textit{C. A. Stuart}, Atti Accad. Naz. Lincei, Cl. Sci. Fis. Mat. Nat., IX. Ser., Rend. Lincei, Mat. Appl. 17, No. 4, 309--334 (2006; Zbl 1113.35067)], new results are obtained under weaker conditions that the nonlinear problem is not Fréchet differentiable with respect to \(u\) at \(u = 0\), although it is differentiable in the weaker sense of Hadamard.