Continuity, compactness, and degree theory for operators in systems involving \(p\)-Laplacians and inclusions (Q942177)

Let \(\Omega\) be a bounded open Lipschitz domain of \({\mathbb{R}}^{d}\). The author considers a system of nonlinear differential inclusions of the form \[ \begin{multlined} -{\mathrm{div}}(\varphi_{n}(x,u_{n}(x),\nabla u_{n}(x)))-g_{n}(x,u_{1}(x),\dots,u_{N}(x), \nabla u_{1}(x),\dots,\nabla u_{N}(x)) \\ \in f_{n}(\lambda,x,u_{1}(x),\dots,u_{N}(x), \nabla u_{1}(x),\dots,\nabla u_{N}(x)) \qquad \forall x\in\Omega,\;\forall n\in\{1,\dots,N\}, \end{multlined} \] with suitable boundary conditions involving differential inclusions. Here \(\lambda\) is a parameter ranging in some metric space and \(\varphi_{n}\), \(f_{n}\), \(g_{n}\) are nonlinear real-valued functions. For a special choice of \(\varphi_{n}\), the term in divergence form of such equations becomes a \(p\)-Laplace operator. As done classically, the author exploits the variational formulation in order to cast the above problem into the form of an abstract operator inclusion. Then the author shows that one can develop a degree theory for the abstract formulation in order to show existence.