A weighted eigencurve for Steklov problems with a potential (Q354373)

The authors consider the quasilinear equation \(\Delta_pu = V(x)|u|^{p-2}u\) in a smooth bounded open subset \(\Omega\) of the \(N\)-dimensional Euclidean space, with the conditions \(|\nabla u|^{p-2}\partial_\nu u = \lambda m(x)|u|^{p-2}u\) on the boundary, under the assumption that the potential \(V\) is essentially bounded and the weight function \(m\) is Hölder continuous with a nontrivial positive part on \(\partial\Omega\). Here \(1<p<\infty\), \(\Delta_pu=\) div\((|\nabla u|^{p-2}\nabla u)\) is the \(p\)-Laplacian, \(\partial_\nu\) is the outward normal derivative. In Section 3 the existence of \textit{principal eigenvalues}, i.e. those numbers \(\lambda\) for which the problem admits a non-trivial positive solution, is proved to be equivalent to the positivity of the best constant for a Sobolev-type inequality involving an auxiliary \(p\)-energy and a weighted \(L^p\) norm; moreover, the principal eigenvalues are uniquely determined and simple if the weight is positive, and come in pairs otherwise, provided that the auxiliary nonlinear stationary Schrödinger equation \(-\Delta_pu+V|u|^{p-2}u=\lambda|u|^{p-2}u\) has a positive first eigenvalue with Dirichlet null boundary conditions. The authors prove and use the fact that in this case for all given \(\lambda\) there exists a principal eigenvalue \(\mu_1(\lambda)\) to a perturbative problem (obtained from the original Steklov-type eigenvalue problem by adding the term \(\mu|u|^{p-2}u\) to the boundary condition) and the concavity of \(\lambda\mapsto\mu_1(\lambda)\). In Section 4 a spectral gap is obtained via mountain pass techniques. Section 5 adapts the method used in Section 3 to a modified eigenvalue problem with mixed Dirichlet-Steklov boundary conditions. Eventually, in Section 5 the authors make use of the Moser iterative scheme to obtain a priori \(L^\infty\)-bounds for eigenfunctions of the perturbative problem.