Existence of nontrivial solutions for quasilinear elliptic equations at critical growth (Q658657)

The author considers the following equation \[ \begin{aligned} -D_j(a_{ij}(x,u) D_iu)+ \frac12 \partial _s a_{ij}(x,u)D_iu D_ju =& f(x,u), \;\;x \in \Omega ;\\ u=& 0, \;\;x\in \partial \Omega \end{aligned} \tag{1} \] where \(\Omega \) is a bounded smooth domain in \({\mathbb R}^N\) \((N \geq 3)\). Here \(a_{ij}(x,s) : \Omega \times {\mathbb R} \to {\mathbb R}\), \(1\leq i,j \leq N\) are measurable in \(x\) and are continuous in \(s\), \(a_{ij}=a_{ji}\), \(\partial _sa_{ij}\) denotes the derivatives of \(a_{ij}\) with respect to \(s\). The repeated indices indicate the summation from \(1\) to \(N\). The author discusses the existence of nontrivial solutions for (1) when \(a_{ij}(x,u)\) are possibly unbounded with respect to \(u\). More precisely the following conditions are assumed: \((a_1)\) there exists \(\nu >0\) such that \(a_{ij}(x,s)\xi _i \xi _j \geq \nu | \xi | ^2\); \((a_2)\) there exist \(\beta \geq \alpha >0\) and \(p\geq 0\) such that \[ \alpha | \xi | ^2 \leq \lim _{| s | \to \infty }| s | ^{-p} a_{ij}(x,s) \xi _i \xi _j = \overline{a}_{ij}(x) \xi _i \xi _j \leq \beta | \xi | ^2; \] \((a_3)\) there exists \(\sigma \in (2m , 2^*m )\) such that \[ 0\leq s \partial _s a_{ij}(x,s) \xi _i \xi _j \leq (\sigma -2) a_{ij}(x,s) \xi _i \xi _j, \] where \(m=(p+2)/2\) and \(2^*=2N/(N-2)\). For the function \(f\), assume that \(f\) is of the form \[ f(x,s)= | s | ^{2^*m-2}s + \lambda g(x,s), \] where \(\lambda >0\) is a real parameter and \(g(x,s)\) is a Carathéodory function and satisfies \((g_1)\) there exists \(C>0, q \in (2m,2^*m)\) such that \(| g(x,s)| \leq C(1+| s | ^{q-1})\); \((g_2)\) \(\lim _{s \to 0^+} g(x,s)/s = \infty \) uniformly for \(x \in \Omega \). The author shows that \(u \) is a weak solution of (1) if \(u \in H_0^1(\Omega ) \cap L^{\infty }(\Omega )\) and satisfies \[ \int _{\Omega } \{ a_{ij}(x,u) D_iu D_j\phi + \frac12 \phi \partial _s a_{ij}(x,u) D_iu D_ju -| u | ^{2^*m-2}u \phi + \lambda g(x,u) \phi \} dx =0 \] for all \(\phi \in H_0^1(\Omega )\). The following results are obtained: \textbf{Theorem 1.} Assume that \((a_1)\)--\((a_3)\) and \((g_1)\)--\((g_2)\) hold. Then there exists \(\lambda ^*>0\) such that for any \(\lambda \in (0,\lambda ^*)\), (1) has at least one nontrivial weak solution in \(H_0^1(\Omega ) \cap L^{\infty }(\Omega )\). \textbf{Theorem 2.} Assume that \((a_1)\)--\((a_3)\) and \((g_1)\)--\((g_2)\) hold. Moreover, assume that for almost every \(x\in \Omega \), \(a_{ij}(x,-s)=a_{ij}(x,s)\) and \(g(x,-s)= -g(x,s)\). Then there exists \(\lambda ^*>0\) such that for any \(\lambda \in (0,\lambda ^*)\), (1) has infinitely many weak solutions in \(H_0^1(\Omega ) \cap L^{\infty }(\Omega )\). For the proof of the theorems, variational methods are used.