Regularity for solutions of nonlinear elliptic equations with degenerate coercivity (Q931291)

The authors consider the following problem \[ (*)\quad\text{div} \, a(x, u, \nabla u) = \text{div} \, F \quad \text{in } \Omega \, , \quad u = 0 \quad \text{in } \partial\Omega \, , \] where \(\Omega\) is a bounded open subset of \({\mathbb R}^n\), \(n \geq 2\), \(\alpha > 0\), \(0 \leq \theta \leq 1\), \(1 < p < n\) and \(F \in L^s(\Omega)\), \(s \geq 1\). The function \(a\) will be assumed to be monotone, i.e. \[ (a(x,s,\xi) - a(x,s,\eta))\cdot (\xi - \eta) > 0 \] for a.e. \(x \in \Omega\), for every \(s \in {\mathbb R}\) and every \(\xi, \eta \in {\mathbb R}^n\), \(\xi \not= \eta\); moreover \(a: \Omega \times {\mathbb R} \times {\mathbb R}^n \to {\mathbb R}^n\) is a Carathéodory function satisfying \[ \begin{aligned} a(x,s,\xi) \cdot \xi \geq h^{p-1}(|s|) \, |\xi|^p \, , \\ \big| a(x,s,\xi) \big| \leq \beta \big( a_0(x) + |s|^{p-1} + |\xi|^{p-1} \big) \, . \end{aligned} \] The function \(a\) may degenerate in the following sense: the function \(h : [0, +\infty) \to (0, +\infty)\) is a continuous function such that \(H(s)=\int_0^s h(t) dt\) is unbounded (in fact, also \(h\) may be unbounded, but \(h\) constant is admitted) and \(a_0 \in L^{p^{\prime}}(\Omega)\), \(p^{\prime}\) the conjugate of \(p\). The authors prove that, denoting by \(u\) a solution in \(W^{1,p}_0(\Omega)\) of \((*)\), if \[ s > \frac{n}{p-1} \] then \(u \in L^{\infty}(\Omega)\). In the other cases (\(s \leq n/(p-1)\)) the problem is studied for the particular case \[ h(s) = \frac{1}{(1+|s|)^{\theta}} \, . \] Regularity result about \(u\) are given depending on \(s\) and giving, when necessary, a weaker definition of solution (by means of truncations).