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Multiple solutions for the -Laplacian problem involving critical growth with aparameter
Boundary Value Problems volume 2013, Article number: 223 (2013)
Abstract
By energy estimates and establishing a local condition, existence of solutions for the-Laplacian problem involving critical growth in abounded domain is obtained via the variational method under the presence ofsymmetry.
MSC: 35J20, 35J62.
1 Introduction
In recent years, the study of problems in differential equations involving variableexponents has been a topic of interest. This is due to their applications in imagerestoration, mathematical biology, dielectric breakdown, electrical resistivity,polycrystal plasticity, the growth of heterogeneous sand piles and fluid dynamics,etc. We refer readers to [1–7] for more information. Furthermore, new applications are continuing to appear,see, for example, [8] and the references therein.
With the variational techniques, the -Laplacian problems with subcritical nonlinearities havebeen investigated, see [9–13]etc. However, the existence of solutions for -Laplacian problems with critical growth is relatively new.In 2010, Bonder and Silva [14] extended the concentration-compactness principle of Lions to the variableexponent spaces, and a similar result can be found in [15]. After that, there have been many publications for this case, see [16–19]etc.
In this paper, we study the existence and multiplicity of solutions for the quasilinearelliptic problem
where , () is a bounded domain with smooth boundary, is a real parameter, , are continuous functions on with
where
and
Related to f, we assume that is a Carathéodory function satisfying for every , and the subcritical growth condition:
(f1) for all , where is a continuous function in satisfying , .
For , we suppose that f satisfies the following:
(f2) there are constants and such that for every , a.e. in Ω,
(f3) there are constants and a continuous function , , with , such that for every , a.e. in Ω,
(f4) there are , and with such that
and
Now we state our result.
Theorem 1.1 Assume that (1.2), (1.3) and(f1)-(f4) are satisfied with, is odd in s. Then,given, there existssuch that problem (1.1) possesses atleast k pairs of nontrivial solutions forall.
Our paper is motivated by [17]. In [17], the authors considered the multiple solutions to problem (1.1) under theconditions that f has the form with and g satisfies the following:
(g1) there is such that
(g2) , odd with respect to t and
(g3) for all and a.e. in Ω, where .
Moreover, they assumed that
and the result is the following theorem.
Theorem 1.2 Assume that (1.2), (1.3), (1.4) and(g1)-(g3) are satisfied with. Then there exists asequencewithsuch that for, problem (1.1) has atleast k pairs of nontrivial solutions.
Note that (f2) is a weaker version of (g3). This conditioncombined with (f1) and the concentration-compactness principle in [14] will allow us to verify that the associated functional satisfies the condition [20] below a fixed level for sufficiently small. Conditions (f3) and(f4) provide the geometry required by the symmetric mountain pass theorem [20]. Compared with (g2), there is no condition imposed on fnear zero in Theorem 1.1. Furthermore, we should mention that our Theorem 1.1 improvesthe main result found in [21]. In that paper, the authors considered only the case where is constant, while in our present paper, we have showedthat the main result found in [21] is still true for a large class of functions.
The paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, we introduce some necessarypreliminary knowledge. Section 3 contains the proof of our main result.
2 Preliminaries
We recall some definitions and basic properties of the generalized Lebesgue-Sobolevspaces and , where is a bounded domain with smooth boundary. And Cwill denote generic positive constants which may vary from line to line.
Set
For any , we define the variable exponent Lebesgue space
with the norm
where is the set of all measurable real functions defined onΩ.
Define the space
with the norm
By , we denote the subspace of which is the closure of with respect to the norm . Further, we have
There is a constantsuch that for all,
So, and are equivalent norms in . Hence we will use the norm for all .
Set. For, we have:
-
(1)
.
-
(2)
If, then.
-
(3)
If, then.
-
(4)
.
-
(5)
.
Lemma 2.3[23]
Ifwitha.e. in Ω, then thereexists the continuous embedding.
Lemma 2.4[22]
Ifandfor any, the embeddingis compact.
Lemma 2.5[23]
The conjugate space ofis, where. For anyand,
The energy functional corresponding to problem (1.1) is defined on as follows:
Then and ,
We say that is a weak solution of problem (1.1) in the weak sense iffor any ,
So, the weak solution of problem (1.1) coincides with the critical point of. Next, we need only to consider the existence of criticalpoints of .
We say that satisfies the condition if any sequence , such that and as , possesses a convergent subsequence. In this article, weshall be using the following version of the symmetric mountain pass theorem [20].
Lemma 2.6[20]
Let, where E is a real Banach spaceand V is finite dimensional. Supposethatis an even functionalsatisfyingand
-
(i)
there is a constantsuch that;
-
(ii)
there is a subspace W of E withand there issuch that;
-
(iii)
consideringgiven by (ii), I satisfiesfor.
Then I possesses at leastpairs of nontrivial critical points.
Next we would use the concentration-compactness principle for variable exponent spaces.This will be the keystone that enables us to verify that satisfies the condition.
Lemma 2.7[14]
Let and be two continuous functions such that
Letbe a weakly convergent sequenceinwith weak limit u such that:
-
weakly in the sense of measures;
-
weakly in the sense of measures.
Also assume thatis nonempty. Then, for some countableindex set K, we have:
whereand S is the best constant in theGagliardo-Nirenberg-Sobolev inequality for variable exponents,namely
3 Proof of main results
Lemma 3.1 Assume that f satisfies (f1)and (f2) with. Then, given, there existssuch thatsatisfies thecondition for all, provided.
Proof (1) The boundedness of the sequence.
Let be a sequence, i.e., satisfies , and as . If , we have done. So we only need to consider the case that with . We know that
From (f2), we get
Notice that , , then from Lemmas 2.3, 2.4, , so . Let , then , and from the Hölder inequality,
In addition, from Lemma 2.2(2), we can also obtain that
Then
and
So we have
From (3.1), (3.3) and (f1), we have
Noting that , we have that is bounded.
-
(2)
Up to a subsequence, in .
By Lemma 2.7, we can assume that there exist two measures μ,ν and a function such that
Choose a function such that , on and on . For any , and , let . It is clear that is bounded in . From , we can obtain , as , i.e.,
From (f1), by Lemma 2.7, we have
By the Hölder inequality, it is easy to check that
From (3.5), as , we obtain . From Lemma 2.7, we conclude that
Given , set
where S is given by (2.5). Considering , we have
and
We claim that . Indeed, if , this follows by (3.7). Otherwise, taking in (3.2), we obtain
Therefore, by (3.8), the claim is proved. As a consequence of this fact, we concludethat for all . Therefore, in . Then, with the similar step in [17], we can get that in . □
Next we prove Theorem 1.1 by verifying that the functional satisfies the hypotheses of Lemma 2.6. First, we recallthat each basis for a real Banach space E is a Schauder basis forE, i.e., given , the functional defined by
is a bounded linear functional [24, 25]. Now, fixing a Schauder basis for , for , we set
then .
Lemma 3.2 Givenfor alland, there issuch that for all, .
Proof We prove the lemma by contradiction. Suppose that there exist and for every such that . Taking , we have for every and . Hence is a bounded sequence, and we may suppose, without loss ofgenerality, that in . Furthermore, for every since for all . This shows that . On the other hand, by the compactness of the embedding, we conclude that . This proves the lemma. □
Lemma 3.3 Suppose that f satisfies (f3),then there existandsuch thatfor all.
Proof Now suppose that , with , . From (f3), we know that
Consequently, considering to be chosen posteriorly by Lemma 3.2, we have, for all and j sufficiently large,
Now taking such that and noting that , so , if . We can choose such that . Next, we take such that for ,
for every , , the proof is complete. □
Lemma 3.4 Suppose that f satisfies (f4),then, given, there exist asubspace W ofand a constantsuch thatand.
Proof Let and be such that , and . First, we take with . Considering , we have . Let and such that , and . Next, we take with . After a finite number of steps, we get such that , , and for all . Let , by construction, , and for every ,
Since
consider the case that , then . Now it suffices to verify that
From condition (f4), given , there is such that for every , a.e. x in ,
Consequently, for and ,
and
where and . Observing that W is finite dimensional, we have, , and the inequality is obtained by taking. The proof is complete. □
Proof of Theorem 1.1 First, we recall that , where and are defined in (3.9). Invoking Lemma 3.3, we find, and satisfies (i) with . Now, by Lemma 3.4, there is a subspace W of with such that satisfies (ii). By Lemma 3.1, satisfies (iii). Since and is even, we may apply Lemma 2.6 to conclude that possesses at least k pairs of nontrivial criticalpoints. The proof is complete. □
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to express their gratitude to the anonymous referees forvaluable comments and suggestions which improved our original manuscript greatly. Thefirst author is supported by NSFC-Tian Yuan Special Foundation (No. 11226116),Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province of China for Young Scholar (No.BK2012109), the China Scholarship Council (No. 201208320435), the FundamentalResearch Funds for the Central Universities (No. JUSRP11118, JUSRP211A22). The secondauthor is supported by NSFC (No. 10871096). The third author is supported by GraduateEducation Innovation of Jiangsu Province (No. CXZZ13-0389).
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Yang, Y., Zhang, J. & Shang, X. Multiple solutions for the -Laplacian problem involving critical growth with aparameter. Bound Value Probl 2013, 223 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1186/1687-2770-2013-223
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/1687-2770-2013-223