Existence and multiplicity of solutions for elliptic systems with nonstandard growth condition in \(\mathbb R^N\) (Q2470089)

The existence and multiplicity of solutions for the following elliptic systems of gradient type with nonstandard growth conditions \[ \begin{cases} -\text{div}(| \nabla u| ^{p(x)-2}+| \nabla u| ^{p(x)-2}u=\frac{{\partial F}}{\partial u}(x, u, v)& \text{in } \mathbb{R}^N, \\ -\text{div}(| \nabla v| ^{q(x)-2}+| \nabla v| ^{q(x)-2}u=\frac{{\partial F}}{\partial u}(x, u, v)& \text{in } \mathbb{R}^N \end{cases} \tag{1} \] are proved, where \(X=W^{1, p(x)}(\mathbb{R}^N)\times W^{1, q(x)}(\mathbb{R}^N)\), \(N\geq 2,\) \(p(x), q(x) \) are functions on \(\mathbb{R}^N.\) The function \(F\) is assumed to satisfy Carathéodory conditions and belong to the space \(L^{\infty}\) with respect to \(x\in\mathbb{R}^N \) and to the space \(C^1\) with respect to \(u, v \in \mathbb{R}.\) In particular, when \(p(x)\equiv p,\) (1) is the well known \(p\)-Laplace problem. There is a large number of papers on the existence of solutions for \(p\)-Laplace equations in \(\mathbb{R}^N\). It is known that in the study of \(p(x)\)-Laplace equations in \(\mathbb{R}^N,\) a main difficulty arises from the lack of compactness. In this paper, the authors overcome this difficulty through the method of weight functions as in [\textit{X. L. Fan} and \textit{X. Y. Han}, Nonlinear Anal., Theory Methods Appl. 59, 173--188 (2004; Zbl 1134.35333)]. By the critical point theory, two basic results on the existence of solutions of problem (1) are presented; these results correspond to the ``sublinear'' and ``superlinear'' cases for \(p=2\).