A unified treatment using critical point methods of the existence of multiple solutions for superlinear and sublinear Neumann problems (Q652079)

Let \(\Omega\subset{\mathbb R}^N\) be a bounded domain with smooth boundary. This paper deals with the semilinear elliptic equation \(-\Delta u=f(x,u)\) in \(\Omega\) under the Neumann boundary condition \(\partial u/\partial n=0\) on \(\partial\Omega\). The nonlinear term \(f\) is assumed to be subcritical and to have either a sublinear or a superlinear growth. Under natural assumptions, the authors establish several multiplicity results. This is mainly done by combining variational methods (critical point theory, Morse theory), monotonicity methods (lower and upper solutions), truncation techniques, and by exploiting the invariance properties of the negative gradient flow. As a conclusion, the authors establish the existence of seven nontrivial smooth solutions, four of them having constant sign and three solutions being nodal (sign-changing) solutions.