Degenerate elliptic boundary value problems with asymmetric nonlinearity (Q978495)

The interesting paper under review deals with the study of a class of semilinear degenerate elliptic boundary value problems with asymmetric nonlinearity which include as particular cases the Dirichlet and Robin problems. Namely, the author considers the problem \[ \begin{cases} -\sum_{i=1}^N {\partial\over {\partial x_i}}\left( \sum_{j=1}^N a^{ij}(x){{\partial u}\over {\partial x_j}}\right)+c(x)u+p(u)=h(x) & \text{in}\;\Omega,\\ a(x){{\partial u}\over {\partial \nu}}+b(x)u=0 &\text{on}\;\partial\Omega, \end{cases} \] where \(\Omega\subset\mathbb R^N,\) \(N\geq2,\) is a bounded and smooth domain, \[ \partial/\partial\nu = \sum_{i,j=1}^N a^{ij}(x)n_j{{\partial}\over {\partial x_i}} \] is the conormal derivative associated to the uniformly elliptic operator, \((n_1,\ldots,n_N)\) is the unit exterior normal to \(\partial\Omega,\) \(a^{ij},\;c,\;a,\;b\in C^\infty,\) \(c\geq0,\) \(a,\;b\geq0\) with \(a(x)+b(x)>0\) and \(b\not\equiv0.\) The most essential point is how to generalize the classical variational approach to eigenvalue problems with an indefinite weight to the degenerate case. The variational approach adopted by the author is based on the theory of fractional powers of analytic semigroups. By making use of global inversion theorems with singularities between Banach spaces, he proves very exact results on the number of solutions of the problem, extending this way an earlier theorem by \textit{A. Ambrosetti} and \textit{G. Prodi} [Ann. Mat. Pura Appl., IV. Ser. 93, 231--246 (1972; Zbl 0288.35020)] to the degenerate case.