Anisotropic eigenvalue problems with singular and sign-changing terms (Q6590908)

Let \(\Omega \subseteq \mathbb{R}^N\) be a bounded domain with a \(C^2\)-boundary \(\partial \Omega\). The authors focus on an anisotropic problem of the form \N\[\N\begin{cases} - \Delta_p u - \Delta_q u =\lambda [\xi(z)u^{-\eta(z)}+f(z,u)] \mbox{ in }\Omega,\\\Nu =0 \mbox{ on }\partial \Omega, \, u >0 \mbox{ in }\Omega,\, p,q \in C(\overline{\Omega}), \, \lambda>0.\end{cases} \N\]\NIn this problem \(\Delta_r\) denotes the variable exponent \(r\)-Laplace differential operator defined by \N\[\N\Delta_r u =\operatorname{div}(|\nabla u|^{r-2}\nabla u) \quad \mbox{for all } u \in W_0^{1,r}(\Omega).\N\]\NThe reaction exhibits the combined effects of a singular term \(\xi(z)u^{-\eta(z)}\) with \(\xi \in L^\infty(\Omega)\), \(\eta \in C(\overline{\Omega})\) and \(0< \eta(z)<1\) for all \(z \in \overline{\Omega}\). The other term is a Carathéodory function \(f(z,u)\) of appropriate growth. The authors obtain the existence of at least two positive solutions in Theorem 4.4 (multiplicity result), provided that the parameter \(\lambda>0\) is small enough, and involving technical conditions on exponents \(p,q,\eta\), coefficient function \(\xi\) and Carathéodory function \(f\). The strategy is based on a judicious combination of variational tools together with truncation and comparison techniques. The preliminary work is given in Section 3 (see Propositions 3.1-3.4), where the authors study several auxiliary boundary value problems, whose solutions are used for bypassing the singularity in the principal problem. The proof of the multiplicity result is obtained by Propositions 4.1-4.3.