The Nehari manifold for a Kirchhoff type problem involving sign-changing weight functions (Q627675)

Let \(\Omega\subset {\mathbb R}^N\) be a bounded domain with smooth boundary and assume that \(h:\overline\Omega\times {\mathbb R}\rightarrow{\mathbb R}\) is a continuous function. Assume \(a\) and \(b\) are positive numbers and denote \(M(t):=at+b\). This paper is concerned with the qualitative analysis of solutions to the nonlinear stationary problem \[ -M\left(\int_\Omega |\nabla u|^2dx\right)\Delta u=h(x,u)\qquad x\in\Omega\,, \] subject to the Dirichlet boundary condition \(u=0\) on \(\partial\Omega\). The main objective of the present paper is to establish the existence of multiple solutions to this class of Kirchhoff-type problems. This is done by means of variational methods which combine the qualitative analysis on Nehari manifolds with the fibering map method.