The regularizing effect of lower order terms in elliptic problems involving Hardy potential (Q524660)

The note deals with existence and summability of solutions to elliptic problems with a power-like lower order term and a Hardy potential of the type \[ \begin{cases} -\text{div\,}(M(x)\nabla u)+b|u|^{r-2}u= a\frac{u}{|x|^2}+f &\text{in}\;\Omega,\\ u=0 & \text{on}\;\partial\Omega, \end{cases} \] where \(\Omega\subset \mathbb{R}^N\) is a bounded domain containing the origin, \(M(x)\) is a uniformly elliptic matrix with essentially bounded entries, \(a,b>0\) and \(f\in L^m(\Omega)\) with \(m\in \left[\frac{r}{r-1},\frac{2N}{N+2}\right).\) The authors prove that, due to the presence of the lower order term \(b|u|^{r-2}u,\) finite energy solutions of the above problem exist and are more summable under weaker assumptions than those needed for the existence without it. Precisely, the regularizing effect of the lower order term ``wins'' on the bad coercivity of the ``Hardy term'': if \(r > 2^*\), then the solutions obtained turn out to be in a better space than \(L^{m^{**}}(\Omega)\) for every value of \(a\), that is, also in the case when the operator \(-\text{div\,}(M(x)\nabla u)- a\frac{u}{|x|^2}\) is not coercive.