Multiple nontrivial solutions for critical growth quasilinear elliptic systems (Q714487)

The author considers the existence and multiplicity of nontrivial solutions to the following critical quasilinear elliptic system: \[ \begin{cases} -\Delta _p u_i = \frac{1}{p^*} D_{u_i} F({\mathbf u}) + \lambda _i | u_i | ^{q-2} u_i & \mathrm{in}\,\, \Omega , i=1,\dots ,k, \\ u_i=0 & \mathrm{on} \,\, \partial \Omega , i=1,\dots ,k, \end{cases}\tag{1} \] where \(\Omega \subset {{\mathbb R}}^N\, (N\geq 4)\) is a bounded domain with smooth boundary \(\partial \Omega \) such that \(0 \in \Omega \), \({\mathbf u}= (u_1,\dots ,u_k)\), \(\Delta _pu_i = \mathrm{div}\, (| \nabla u_i | ^{p-2} \nabla u_i)\) is the \(p\)-Laplacian operator, \(D_{u_i}F\) denotes the partial derivative of \(F\) with respect to \(u_i\), \(F:{\mathbb R}^k \to {\mathbb R}^+ \) is a \(C^1\) positively homogeneous function of degree \(p^*:=Np/(N-p)\), and \({\mathbf u} \in {\mathbb R}^k\), \(\lambda _i>0\,(1\leq i \leq k), 1<q<p<N\). Define \[ \Lambda _0= \left( \frac{p-q}{p^*-q}\right)^{p/(p^*-p)}\left( \frac{p^*-q}{p^*-p}| \Omega | ^{(p^*-q)/p^*}\right) ^{-p/(p-q)} S^{q/(p-q)}S_F^{N/p}>0 \] where \[ S=\inf _{u \in W^{1,p}_0(\Omega ) \setminus \{0\}}\frac{\int _{\Omega } | \nabla u | ^p d x}{\left(\int _{\Omega } | u | ^{p^*}dx \right)^{p/p^*}}, \] and \(S_F= S/M_F\) where \[ M_F= \max \left\{ (F({\mathbf u}))^{p/p^*}: {\mathbf u }=(u_1,\dots ,u_k)\in {\mathbb R}^k, \sum _{i=1}^k| u_i | ^p =1\right\}. \] Then the author obtains the following theorems. Theorem 1. Let \(F\in C^1({\mathbb R}^k, {\mathbb R}^+)\) be positively homogeneous of degree \(p^*\). If \(\lambda _i>0, 1\leq i \leq k\) satisfy \(0< \sum _{i=1}^k \lambda _i^{p/(p-q)}< \Lambda _0\), then problem (1) has at least one nontrivial solution in \(W^{1,p}_0(\Omega , {\mathbb R}^k)\). Theorem 2. Let \(F\in C^1({\mathbb R}^k, {\mathbb R}^+)\) be positively homogeneous of degree \(p^*\). There exsits \(\Lambda _1>0\) such that \(\lambda _i>0, 1\leq i \leq k\) and \(0< \sum _{i=1}^k \lambda _i^{p/(p-q)}< \Lambda _1\), then problem (1) has at least two nontrivial solutions in \(W^{1,p}_0(\Omega , {\mathbb R}^k)\). The proofs are based on the Nehari manifold and variational methods.