A free boundary problem arising from segregation of populations with high competition (Q2436318)

The paper is concerned with the nonlinear elliptic system of equations \[ \begin{aligned} \mathcal{M}^{-}\left( u_{i}^{\varepsilon}\right) & =\frac{1}{\varepsilon }u_{i}^{\varepsilon}\sum_{j\neq i}u_{j}^{\varepsilon}\qquad\text{in } \Omega,\text{ }i=1,2,\ldots,d,\\ u_{i}^{\varepsilon} & >0\qquad\text{in }\Omega,\text{ }i=1,2,\ldots,d,\\ u_{i}^{\varepsilon} & =\phi_{i}\qquad\text{on }\partial\Omega,\text{ }i=1,2,\ldots,d,\\ \phi_{i}\phi_{j} & =0\qquad\text{on }\partial\Omega,\text{ }i\neq j, \end{aligned} \] where \(\mathcal{M}^{-}\) denotes the extremal Pucci operator. This problem is motivated by the Gause-Lotka-Volterra model in population dynamics which describes the situation where competing species can diffuse and have high competition rates. The main goals are to obtain regularity results for the system under consideration, to characterize the limit free boundary value problem obtained as \(\varepsilon\rightarrow0,\) and to discuss the existence of solutions.