On a class of elliptic problems with indefinite nonlinearities (Q2510358)

Let \(\Omega\) be a bounded smooth domain in \(\mathbb{R}^N\) (\(N\geq 3\)) and let \(\lambda_1\) be the first eigenvalue of the Laplacian operator on the domain \(\Omega\), with Dirichlet boundary conditions. The authors consider the following elliptic problem \((P_\mu)\): \[ \begin{cases}-\Delta u=\lambda_1 u+\mu g(x,u)+W(x)f(u)\quad &\text{ in } \Omega,\\ u=0 &\quad \text{ on }\partial \Omega,\end{cases} \] where \(f:\mathbb{R}\rightarrow \mathbb{R}\) is a continuous function with subcritical growth at infinity, \(W:\overline{\Omega}\rightarrow\mathbb{R}\) is a continuous weight function which is allowed to be sign-changing in \(\Omega\), \(g:\Omega\times \mathbb{R}\rightarrow \mathbb{R}\) is a locally bounded Carathéodory function, and \(\mu\) is a nonnegative parameter. Functions \(f,g,W\) are also assumed satisfying the following conditions: there exist \(q>2\) and \(a\neq 0\) such that \[ \lim_{s\rightarrow 0^+}\int_0^sf(t)dt/s^q=a, \] \[ \lim_{s\rightarrow 0^+}\int_0^sg(x,t)dt/s^q=+\infty\,\, \text{ uniformly in}\,\, \Omega, \] and \[ a\int_\Omega W(x)\varphi_1^qdx<0. \] Here, \(\varphi_1\) is the positive normalized eigenfunction in \(H_0^1(\Omega)\) associated with the eigenvalue \(\lambda_1\). Using variational and sub-supersolution methods, the authors establish several results concerning the existence of nonnegative and nonzero solutions as well as the multiplicity of nonnegative and positive solutions for problem \((P_\mu)\), with \(\mu\) sufficiently small. Besides the fact that the weight function \(W\) may change sign in \(\Omega\), a further interesting feature of the results presented in this paper is that the perturbation term \(\mu g(x,t)\) is allowed to have arbitrary growth at infinity.