Existence of positive solutions for \(p(x)\)-Laplacian equations with a singular nonlinear term (Q2877642)

In this paper the authors consider the following elliptic system. NEWLINE\[NEWLINE-\Delta_{p(x)}u=\lambda f(x,u)\text{, }x\in\OmegaNEWLINE\]NEWLINE NEWLINE\[NEWLINEu(x)>0\text{, }x\in\OmegaNEWLINE\]NEWLINE NEWLINE\[NEWLINEu(x)=0\text{, }x\in\partial\OmegaNEWLINE\]NEWLINE In the above PDE it is assumed that \(\Omega\subseteq\mathbb{R}^{N}\) is an open, bounded set with \(\partial\Omega\) of class \(\mathcal{C}^{2}\). Furthermore, the operator \(\Delta_{p(x)}\) is the so-called \(p(x)\)-Laplacian, which is a variable exponent analogue of the familiar \(p\)-Laplacian operator and is thus defined by NEWLINE\[NEWLINE-\Delta_{p(x)}u:=-\nabla\cdot\left(|\nabla u|^{p(x)-2}\nabla u\right).NEWLINE\]NEWLINE Here, it should be mentioned that the map \(p\) is assumed to be of class \(\mathcal{C}^{1}\) on \(\overline{\Omega}\). In addition, it is assumed that \(f\) has a decompositional structure from above in the sense that \(f(x,u)\leq b(x)g(u)\), for each \((x,u)\in\Omega\times(0,+\infty)\), with \(g\) continuous and \(b\) belonging to an appropriate variable exponent Lebesgue space. Several existence theorems, too numerous to mention specifically here, are given by means of the classical upper- and lower-solution technique. It should be pointed out that the first of these theorems only gives existence when \(\lambda\) is small enough, and in this case it seems that \(\lambda\) is perhaps uncomputable; in particular, no examples are given demonstrating how one might compute \(\lambda\). On the other hand, three other existence results are given, each in case that much more demanding hypotheses are imposed (e.g., radial symmetry). In these cases, more useful statements about \(\lambda\) are provided.