Existence results for semilinear elliptic variational inequalities with changing sign nonlinearities (Q857703)

Consider the following variational inequality, \[ u\in H_0^1(\Omega ), \;u\leq \psi \;in \;\Omega, \] \[ \langle Au, v-u \rangle - \lambda {\int}_{\Omega} u(v-u)\, dx \geq {\int}_{\Omega} pf(u)(v-u)\, dx, \;\forall v\in H_0^1(\Omega), \;v\leq \psi \;in \;\Omega, \] where \(\Omega\) is an open bounded subset of \(R^N\) with a sufficiently smooth boundary \(\partial \Omega\), \(\lambda\) is a real parameter, \(A\) is a uniformly elliptic operator, \(\psi\in H^1(\Omega)\), \(\psi \geq 0\) on \(\partial \Omega\), \(p\) is a changing sign function, and \(f\) is a continuous function which satisfies some superlinear and subcritical growth conditions at zero and at infinity. Denote by \({\lambda}_1\) the first eigenvalue of \(A\). The fundamental tool to derive existence to \((VI)\) is a penalization method combined with the Mountain Pass Theorem and the Linking Theorem, respectively in the case \(\lambda < {\lambda}_1\) and \(\lambda \geq {\lambda}_1\).