Multivalued elliptic operators with nonstandard growth (Q682059)

The interesting paper under review deals with the Dirichlet boundary value problem \[ \begin{cases} -\nabla a(x,\nabla u)=\nabla g & \text{ in }\Omega,\\ u=0 & \text{ on } \partial\Omega, \end{cases} \] for monotone elliptic equations with nonstandard growth, and where \(\Omega\subset\mathbb R^n\) is a bounded Lipschitz domain. The growth condition is defined in terms of a generalized \(N\)-function \(\varphi(x, t)\) which is, in general, only measurable with respect to \(x.\) A typical example is the case of \(p(x)\) growth when \(\varphi(x, t)=t^{p(x)}\). The most important assumption on the growth function is that \(\varphi(x,t)\) and its conjugate satisfy the doubling condition. In general, the problem considered is not assumed to be regular and, in some of the results, the authors allow also multivalued functions \(a(x,\xi)\). Setting \(V\) for the Musielak-Sobolev space \(W^{1,\varphi}_0(\Omega)\), and \(H\) for the closure of \(C^{\infty}_0(\Omega)\) in \(W^{1,\varphi}_0(\Omega)\), the authors obtain results on the existence of \(V\) and \(H\) solutions for a multivalued version of the problem considered. The technique adopted relies on interpretation of the problem in terms of an operator equation with a multivalued maximal monotone operator and on a suitable approximation with regular problems.