Existence, nonexistence and uniqueness of positive solutions for nonlinear eigenvalue problems (Q523840)

The authors study the positive solutions for perturbations of the nonlinear eigenvalue problem \[ \begin{cases} -\triangle_{p}u=\lambda u^{p-1}+f(z,u)& \text{ in }\;\Omega,\\ u\geq0,\\ u=0 &\text{ on }\;\partial\Omega, \end{cases}\eqno{(\mathrm P_\lambda)} \] where \(\Omega\subset\mathbb{R}^{N}\) is a bounded domain with a \(C^{2}\)-boundary \(\partial\Omega\), \(\triangle_{p}u:=\mathrm{div}(\|\nabla u\|^{p-2}\nabla u)\) \((p>1)\) is the \(p\)-Laplacian operator and \(\|\cdot\|\) denotes the Euclidean norm in \(\mathbb{R}^{N}\), \(\lambda>0\) is a parameter, \(f(z,x)\) is a Carathéodory function. When the nonlinear term \(f\) is \((p-1)\)-sublinear or \((p-1)\)-superlinear near \(\infty\), the authors use variational methods to establish the existence and nonexistence of positive solutions depending on the range of the parameter \(\lambda\). More specifically, let \(\widehat{\lambda}_{1}\) be the principle eigenvalue of \(\left(-\triangle_{p}, W^{1,p}_{0}(\Omega)\right)\), for every \(\lambda\in(0, \widehat{\lambda}_{1})\), \((\mathrm P_{\lambda})\) admits a unique positive solution if \(f\) is \((p-1)\)-sublinear, and a smallest positive solution if \(f\) is \((p-1)\)-superlinear, denoted by \(u_{\lambda}\). Moreover, it is shown that \(u_{\lambda}\) is continuous and monotonous on \(\lambda\) when \(f\) satisfies appropriate conditions. In addition, the authors investigate the following perturbation problem \[ \begin{cases} -\triangle_{p}u=\lambda u^{p-1}+\mu f(z,u)& \text{ in }\;\Omega,\\ u\geq0,\\ u=0 &\text{ on }\;\partial\Omega, \end{cases}\eqno{(\mathrm P_{\lambda, \mu})} \] by imposing no condition on \(f\) near \(\infty\), the existence and multiplicity of positive solutions to \((\mathrm P_{\lambda, \mu})\) are established depending on the parameters \(\mu\) and \(\lambda\). Lastly, it is mentioned that the Neumann boundary problem \[ \begin{cases} -\triangle_{p}u=\lambda u^{p-1}+f(z,u)& \text{ in }\;\Omega,\\ u\geq0,\\ \frac{\partial u}{\partial n}=0 &\text{ on }\;\partial\Omega \end{cases}\eqno{(\mathrm P^N_\lambda)} \] does not admit positive solutions for \(\lambda>0\) provided that \(f(z,0)=0\), \(f(z,x)\geq0\) for all \(x\geq0\) and \(f(z,\cdot)\) has subcritical growth.