Uniqueness to quasilinear problems for the \(p\)-Laplacian in radially symmetric domains (Q5930170)

The authors study the uniqueness of positive radial solutions and dead core generation for the boundary value problem \[ -\Delta_p u=\lambda u^{p-1}-u^q+g(u) \quad \text{in} \Omega , \qquad u=0 \quad \text{on} \partial \Omega,\tag{1} \] with \(p>2\), \(q>p-1\), \(\lambda\) is a positive parameter and \(\Omega \subset \mathbb{R}^N\) is either a ball or an annulus. First, the more general class of problems \[ -\Delta_p u=\lambda f(\lambda,u) \quad \text{in} \Omega , \qquad u=0 \quad \text{on} \partial \Omega,\tag{2} \] where \(f\) exhibits a fixed positive zero \(u=\overline u_0\) with order \(k>0\), is studied. The study of weak radial solutions to (2) leads to the analysis of classical solutions to the Cauchy problem \[ -(r^{N-1}\varphi _p(u'))'=\lambda r^{N-1}f(\lambda ,u), \quad u(R)=0, \quad u'(d)=0, \tag{3} \] with \(\varphi _p(z)=|z|^{p-2}z\), \(J=[0,R]\) if \(D\) is a ball, \(J=[a,R]\) for the case of an annulus, \(d\in J\) is chosen so that \(u(d)=u_0=\)sup\(_Du\). To show the uniqueness of radial positive solutions to (2) the authors prove the smooth dependence of solutions to (3) on initial data and parameters, mainly the differentiability with respect to \(d\), with particular emphasis in the singular and limit cases \(u_0=\overline u_0\) and \(d,\lambda \rightarrow +\infty\). As a main consequence it is shown that the perturbed logistic problem (1) exhibits a unique positive solution provided \(\lambda \) is large and the perturbation term \(g\in C^1\) satisfies growth conditions. The authors also study (1) in general domains and prove that every possible positive solution \(u\) to (1) (with an arbitrary smooth domain \(\Omega\)) necessarily develops a dead core \(O_{\lambda }=\{x\in \Omega : u(x)=\overline u_0(\lambda)\}\) when \(\lambda \) is large enough.