Nonlinear Elliptic Equations with L¹ Data as Limit of Bilateral Problems (Q3130130)

The author considers the quasilinear elliptic equation \(-\text{{div}}(a(x,\nabla u))=f\) in \(\Omega\), \(u=0\) on \(\partial\Omega\), where \(\Omega\) is a bounded open subset of \(\mathbb{R}^N\), \(N\geq 2\), \(A(u)=-\text{{div}}(a(x,\nabla u))\) is a monotone operator from \(W^{1,p}_0\) into \(W^{-1,p'}\) (for \(p>1\)), and \(f\) is a function in \(L^1(\Omega)\). It is proved that the above equation admits a unique entropy solution (entropy solutions are functions satisfying some variational inequalities defined with the truncation operators \(T_k(u)=\text{ max}(-k,\text{ min}(u,k))\)). This entropy solution is related to the following bilateral obstacle problem \[ u_n\in K_n,\quad \int_\Omega a(x,\nabla u_n)\cdot \nabla(v-u_n)dx \geq \int_\Omega f(v-u_n)dx\quad \forall v\in K_n, \] where \(K_n=\{v\in W^{1,p}_0(\Omega)\mid |v|\leq n\;a.e.\;\text{ in} \Omega\}\). More precisely, the unique solution \(u\) of the elliptic equation with \(L^1\) data is the limit of \((u_n)_n\), where \(u_n\) is the unique solution of the above bilateral obstacle problem.