Infiltration Equation with Degeneracy on the Boundary

This paper is mainly about the infiltration equation

$$ {u_{t}}= \operatorname{div} \bigl(a(x)|u|^{\alpha }{ \vert { \nabla u} \vert ^{p-2}}\nabla u\bigr),\quad (x,t) \in \Omega \times (0,T), $$

where \(p>1\), \(\alpha >0\), \(a(x)\in C^{1}(\overline{\Omega })\), \(a(x)\geq 0\) with \(a(x)|_{x\in \partial \Omega }=0\). If there is a constant \(\beta \) such that \(\int_{\Omega }a^{-\beta }(x)dx\leq c\), \(p>1+\frac{1}{\beta }\), then the weak solution is smooth enough to define the trace on the boundary, the stability of the weak solutions can be proved as usual. Meanwhile, if for any \(\beta >\frac{1}{p-1}\), \(\int_{\Omega }a^{-\beta }(x)dxdt=\infty \), then the weak solution lacks the regularity to define the trace on the boundary. The main innovation of this paper is to introduce a new kind of the weak solutions. By these new definitions of the weak solutions, one can study the stability of the weak solutions without any boundary value condition.

     

Mean curvature bounds and eigenvalues of Robin Laplacians

We consider the Laplacian with attractive Robin boundary conditions,

$$\begin{aligned} Q^\Omega _\alpha u=-\Delta u, \quad \dfrac{\partial u}{\partial n}=\alpha u \text { on } \partial \Omega , \end{aligned}$$

in a class of bounded smooth domains \(\Omega \in \mathbb {R}^\nu \); here \(n\) is the outward unit normal and \(\alpha >0\) is a constant. We show that for each \(j\in \mathbb {N}\) and \(\alpha \rightarrow +\infty \), the \(j\)th eigenvalue \(E_j(Q^\Omega _\alpha )\) has the asymptotics

$$\begin{aligned} E_j(Q^\Omega _\alpha )=-\alpha ^2 -(\nu -1)H_\mathrm {max}(\Omega )\,\alpha +{\mathcal O}(\alpha ^{2/3}), \end{aligned}$$

where \(H_\mathrm {max}(\Omega )\) is the maximum mean curvature at \(\partial \Omega \). The discussion of the reverse Faber-Krahn inequality gives rise to a new geometric problem concerning the minimization of \(H_\mathrm {max}\). In particular, we show that the ball is the strict minimizer of \(H_\mathrm {max}\) among the smooth star-shaped domains of a given volume, which leads to the following result: if \(B\) is a ball and \(\Omega \) is any other star-shaped smooth domain of the same volume, then for any fixed \(j\in \mathbb {N}\) we have \(E_j(Q^B_\alpha )>E_j(Q^\Omega _\alpha )\) for large \(\alpha \). An open question concerning a larger class of domains is formulated.

     

Quasilinear equations with natural growth in the gradients in spaces of Sobolev multipliers

We study the existence problem for a class of nonlinear elliptic equations whose prototype is of the form \(-\Delta _p u = |\nabla u|^p + \sigma \) in a bounded domain \(\Omega \subset \mathbb {R}^n\). Here \(\Delta _p\), \(p>1\), is the standard p-Laplacian operator defined by \(\Delta _p u=\mathrm{div}\, (|\nabla u|^{p-2}\nabla u)\), and the datum \(\sigma \) is a signed distribution in \(\Omega \). The class of solutions that we are interested in consists of functions \(u\in W^{1,p}_0(\Omega )\) such that \(|\nabla u|\in M(W^{1,p}(\Omega )\rightarrow L^p(\Omega ))\), a space pointwise Sobolev multipliers consisting of functions \(f\in L^{p}(\Omega )\) such that

$$\begin{aligned} \int _{\Omega } |f|^{p} |\varphi |^p dx \le C \int _{\Omega } (|\nabla \varphi |^p + |\varphi |^p) dx \quad \forall \varphi \in C^\infty (\Omega ), \end{aligned}$$

for some \(C>0\). This is a natural class of solutions at least when the distribution \(\sigma \) is nonnegative and compactly supported in \(\Omega \). We show essentially that, with only a gap in the smallness constants, the above equation has a solution in this class if and only if one can write \(\sigma =\mathrm{div}\, F\) for a vector field F such that \(|F|^{\frac{1}{p-1}}\in M(W^{1,p}(\Omega )\rightarrow L^p(\Omega ))\). As an important application, via the exponential transformation \(u\mapsto v=e^{\frac{u}{p-1}}\), we obtain an existence result for the quasilinear equation of Schrödinger type \(-\Delta _p v = \sigma \, v^{p-1}\), \(v\ge 0\) in \(\Omega \), and \(v=1\) on \(\partial \Omega \), which is interesting in its own right.

     

On the <Emphasis Type="Italic">p</Emphasis>-Laplacian with Robin boundary conditions and boundary trace theorems

Let \(\Omega \subset \mathbb {R}^\nu \), \(\nu \ge 2\), be a \(C^{1,1}\) domain whose boundary \(\partial \Omega \) is either compact or behaves suitably at infinity. For \(p\in (1,\infty )\) and \(\alpha >0\), define

$$\begin{aligned} \Lambda (\Omega ,p,\alpha ):=\inf _{\begin{array}{c} u\in W^{1,p}(\Omega )\\ u\not \equiv 0 \end{array}}\dfrac{\displaystyle \int _\Omega |\nabla u|^p \mathrm {d} x - \alpha \displaystyle \int _{\partial \Omega } |u|^p\mathrm {d}\sigma }{\displaystyle \int _\Omega |u|^p\mathrm {d} x}, \end{aligned}$$

where \(\mathrm {d}\sigma \) is the surface measure on \(\partial \Omega \). We show the asymptotics

$$\begin{aligned} \Lambda (\Omega ,p,\alpha )=-(p-1)\alpha ^{\frac{p}{p-1}} - (\nu -1)H_\mathrm {max}\, \alpha + o(\alpha ), \quad \alpha \rightarrow +\infty , \end{aligned}$$

where \(H_\mathrm {max}\) is the maximum mean curvature of \(\partial \Omega \). The asymptotic behavior of the associated minimizers is discussed as well. The estimate is then applied to the study of the best constant in a boundary trace theorem for expanding domains, to the norm estimate for extension operators and to related isoperimetric inequalities.

     

Semilinear elliptic equations with Hardy potential and subcritical source term

Let \(\Omega \) be a smooth bounded domain in \({\mathbb {R}}^N\) (\(N>2\)) and \(\delta (x):=\text {dist}\,(x,\partial \Omega )\). Assume \(\mu \in {\mathbb {R}}_+, \nu \) is a nonnegative finite measure on \(\partial \Omega \) and \(g \in C(\Omega \times {\mathbb {R}}_+)\). We study positive solutions of

$$\begin{aligned} -\Delta u - \frac{\mu }{\delta ^2} u = g(x,u) \text { in } \Omega , \qquad \text {tr}^*(u)=\nu . \end{aligned}$$

(P)

Here \(\text {tr}^*(u)\) denotes the normalized boundary trace of u which was recently introduced by Marcus and Nguyen (Ann Inst H Poincaré Anal Non Linéaire, 34, 69–88, 2017). We focus on the case \(0<\mu < C_H(\Omega )\) (the Hardy constant for \(\Omega \)) and provide qualitative properties of positive solutions of (P). When \(g(x,u)=u^q\) with \(q>0\), we prove that there is a critical value \(q^*\) (depending only on \(N, \mu \)) for (P) in the sense that if \(q<q^*\) then (P) possesses a solution under a smallness assumption on \(\nu \), but if \(q \ge q^*\) this problem admits no solution with isolated boundary singularity. Existence result is then extended to a more general setting where g is subcritical [see (1.28)]. We also investigate the case where g is linear or sublinear and give an existence result for (P).

     

On one-dimensional superlinear indefinite problems involving the $$\phi $$-Laplacian

Let \(\Omega := ( a,b ) \subset \mathbb {R}\), \(m\in L^{1} ( \Omega ) \) and \(\phi :\mathbb {R\rightarrow R}\) be an odd increasing homeomorphism. We consider the existence of positive solutions for problems of the form

$$\begin{aligned} \left\{ \begin{array} [c]{ll} -\phi ( u^{\prime } ) ^{\prime }=m ( x ) f ( u) &{}\quad \text {in } \Omega ,\\ u=0 &{}\quad \text {on } \partial \Omega , \end{array} \right. \end{aligned}$$

where \(f: [ 0,\infty ) \rightarrow [ 0,\infty ) \) is a continuous function which is, roughly speaking, superlinear with respect to \(\phi \). Our approach combines the Guo-Krasnoselski? fixed-point theorem with some estimates on related nonlinear problems. We mention that our results are new even in the case \(m\ge 0\).

     

Existence of Solution for a Singular Elliptic Equation of Kirchhoff Type

We study both the existence and uniqueness of nonnegative solution to a singular elliptic problem of Kirchhoff type, whose model is:

$$\begin{aligned} {\left\{ \begin{array}{ll} -B\left( \dfrac{1}{2}\displaystyle \int _\Omega |\nabla u|^2\mathrm {d}x\right) \Delta u=\dfrac{h(x)}{u^\gamma }, &{}\quad x\in \Omega ,\\ u>0, &{}\quad x\in \Omega ,\\ u=0, &{}\quad x\in \partial \Omega , \end{array}\right. } \end{aligned}$$

where \(\Omega \subset \mathbb {R}^n(n\ge 1)\) is a smooth bounded domain, \(\gamma >1\), \(h\in L^1(\Omega )\) is positive (i.e., \(h(x)>0\) a.e. in \(\Omega \)), \(B : \mathbb {R}^+\rightarrow \mathbb {R}^+\) is a \(C^1\)-continuous function with positive lower bound. A necessary and sufficient condition will be given for the existence of weak solution of the general nonlocal singular elliptic with strong singularity. In addition, we prove that the solution is unique under some suitable conditions.

     

A Faber–Krahn Inequality for Solutions of Schrödinger’s Equation on Riemannian Manifolds

We consider a bounded open set with smooth boundary \(\Omega \subset M\) in a Riemannian manifold (M, g), and suppose that there exists a non-trivial function \(u\in C({\overline{\Omega }})\) solving the problem

$$\begin{aligned} -\Delta u=V(x)u, \,\, \text{ in }\,\,\Omega , \end{aligned}$$

in the distributional sense, with \(V\in L^\infty (\Omega )\), where \(u\equiv 0\) on \(\partial \Omega .\) We prove a sharp inequality involving \(||V||_{L^{\infty }(\Omega )}\) and the first eigenvalue of the Laplacian on geodesic balls in simply connected spaces with constant curvature, which slightly generalises the well-known Faber–Krahn isoperimetric inequality. Moreover, in a Riemannian manifold which is not necessarily simply connected, we obtain a lower bound for \(||V||_{L^{\infty }(\Omega )}\) in terms of its isoperimetric or Cheeger constant. As an application, we show that if \(\Omega \) is a domain on a m-dimensional minimal submanifold of \({\mathbb {R}}^n\) which lies in a ball of radius R, then

$$\begin{aligned} ||V||_{L^{\infty }(\Omega )}\ge \left( \frac{m}{2R}\right) ^{2}. \end{aligned}$$

     

Multilicity results for some nonlinear ellitic roblems with asymtotically $${{\varvec{}}}$$-linear terms

Taking any \(p > 1\), we consider the asymptotically p-linear problem

$$\begin{aligned} \left\{ \begin{array}{ll} - {{\mathrm{div}}}(a(x,u,\nabla u)) + A_t(x,u,\nabla u)\ = \ \lambda ^\infty |u|^{p-2}u + g^\infty (x,u) &{}\quad \hbox {in}\;\Omega ,\\ u\ = \ 0 &{}\quad \hbox {on}\;\partial \Omega , \end{array} \right. \end{aligned}$$

where \(\Omega \) is a bounded domain in \(\mathbb R^N\), \(N\ge 2\), \(A(x,t,\xi )\) is a real function on \(\Omega \times \mathbb R\times \mathbb R^N\) which grows with power p with respect to \(\xi \) and has partial derivatives \(A_t(x,t,\xi ) = \frac{\partial A}{\partial t}(x,t,\xi )\), \(a(x,t,\xi ) = \nabla _\xi A(x,t,\xi )\). If \(A(x,t,\xi ) \rightarrow A^\infty (x,t)\) and \(\frac{g^\infty (x,t)}{|t|^{p-1}} \rightarrow 0\) as \(|t| \rightarrow +\infty \), suitable assumptions, variational methods and either the cohomological index theory or its related pseudo-index one, allow us to prove the existence of multiple nontrivial bounded solutions in the non-resonant case, i.e. if \(\lambda ^\infty \) is not an eigenvalue of the operator associated to \(\nabla _\xi A^\infty (x,\xi )\). In particular, while in [14] the model problem \(A(x,t,\xi ) = \mathcal{A}(x,t) |\xi |^p\) with \(p > N\) is studied, here our goal is twofold: extending such results not only to a more general family of functions \(A(x,t,\xi )\), but also to the more difficult case \(1 < p \le N\).

     

Global $$C^{1,\al pha }$$ regularity and e xistence of multi ple solutions for singular p( x)-La placian equations

In this paper we study the following singular p(x)-Laplacian problem

$$\begin{aligned} \left\{ \begin{array}{l@{\quad }l} - \text{ div } \left( |\nabla u|^{p(x)-2} \nabla u\right) =\frac{ \lambda }{u^{\beta (x)}}+u^{q(x)}, &{} \text{ in }\quad \Omega , \\ u>0, &{} \text{ in }\quad \Omega , \\ u=0, &{} \text{ on }\quad \partial \Omega , \end{array}\right. \end{aligned}$$

where \(\Omega \) is a bounded domain in \(\mathbb {R}^N\), \(N\ge 2\), with smooth boundary \(\partial \Omega \), \(\beta \in C^1(\bar{\Omega })\) with \( 0< \beta (x) <1\), \(p\in C^1(\bar{\Omega })\), \(q \in C(\bar{\Omega })\) with \(p(x)>1\), \(p(x)< q(x) +1 <p^*(x)\) for \(x \in \bar{\Omega }\), where \( p^*(x)= \frac{Np(x)}{N-p(x)} \) for \(p(x) <N\) and \( p^*(x)= \infty \) for \( p(x) \ge N\). We establish \(C^{1,\alpha }\) regularity of weak solutions of the problem and strong comparison principle. Based on these two results, we prove the existence of multiple (at least two) positive solutions for a certain range of \(\lambda \).

     

The effect of the domain topology on the number of solutions of fractional Laplace problems

In this paper we are concerned with the multiplicity of solutions for the following fractional Laplace problem

$$\begin{aligned} \left\{ \begin{array}{ll} (-\Delta )^{s}u= \mu |u|^{q-2}u + |u|^{2^*_s-2}u &{}\quad \text{ in } \Omega \\ u=0 &{}\quad \text{ in } {\mathbb {R}}^n{\setminus } \Omega , \end{array}\right. \end{aligned}$$

where \(\Omega \subset {\mathbb {R}}^n\) is an open bounded set with continuous boundary, \(n>2s\) with \(s\in (0,1),(-\Delta )^{s}\) is the fractional Laplacian operator, \(\mu \) is a positive real parameter, \(q\in [2, 2^*_s)\) and \(2^*_s=2n/(n-2s)\) is the fractional critical Sobolev exponent. Using the Lusternik–Schnirelman theory, we relate the number of nontrivial solutions of the problem under consideration with the topology of \(\Omega \). Precisely, we show that the problem has at least \(cat_{\Omega }(\Omega )\) nontrivial solutions, provided that \(q=2\) and \(n\geqslant 4s\) or \(q\in (2, 2^*_s)\) and \(n>2s(q+2)/q\), extending the validity of well-known results for the classical Laplace equation to the fractional nonlocal setting.

     

Hölder continuity for continuous solutions of the singular minimal surface equation with arbitrary zero set

In this paper we prove the following theorem: Let \(\Omega \subset \mathbb {R}^{n}\) be a bounded open set, \(\psi \in C_{c}^{2}(\mathbb {R}^{n})\), \(\psi > 0\) on \(\partial \Omega \), be given boundary values and u a nonnegative solution to the problem

$$\begin{aligned}&u \in C^{0}(\overline{\Omega }) \cap C^{2}(\{u> 0\}) \\&u = \psi \quad \text { on } \; \partial \Omega \\&{\text {div}} \left( \frac{Du}{\sqrt{1 + |Du|^{2}}}\right) = \frac{\alpha }{u \sqrt{1 + |Du|^{2}}} \quad \text { in } \; \{u > 0\} \end{aligned}$$

where \(\alpha > 0\) is a given constant. Then \(u \in C^{0, \frac{1}{2}} (\overline{\Omega })\). Furthermore we prove strict mean convexity of the free boundary \(\partial \{u = 0\}\) provided \(\partial \{u = 0\}\) is assumed to be of class \(C^{2}\) and \(\alpha \ge 1\).

     

Sign-changing solutions to a partially periodic nonlinear Schrödinger equation in domains with unbounded boundary

We consider the problem

$$\begin{aligned} -\Delta u+\left( V_{\infty }+V(x)\right) u=|u|^{p-2}u,\quad u\in H_{0} ^{1}(\Omega ), \end{aligned}$$

where \(\Omega \) is either \(\mathbb {R}^{N}\) or a smooth domain in \(\mathbb {R} ^{N}\) with unbounded boundary, \(N\ge 3,\) \(V_{\infty }>0,\) \(V\in \mathcal {C} ^{0}(\mathbb {R}^{N}),\) \(\inf _{\mathbb {R}^{N}}V>-V_{\infty }\) and \(2<p<\frac{2N}{N-2}\). We assume V is periodic in the first m variables, and decays exponentially to zero in the remaining ones. We also assume that \(\Omega \) is periodic in the first m variables and has bounded complement in the other ones. Then, assuming that \(\Omega \) and V are invariant under some suitable group of symmetries on the last \(N-m\) coordinates of \(\mathbb {R}^{N}\), we establish existence and multiplicity of sign-changing solutions to this problem. We show that, under suitable assumptions, there is a combined effect of the number of periodic variables and the symmetries of the domain on the number of sign-changing solutions to this problem. This number is at least \(m+1\)

     

Regularity for free interface variational problems in a general class of gradients

We present a way to study a wide class of optimal design problems with a perimeter penalization. More precisely, we address existence and regularity properties of saddle points of energies of the form

$$\begin{aligned} (u,A) \quad \mapsto \quad \int _\Omega 2fu \,\mathrm {d}x \; - \int _{\Omega \cap A} \sigma _1\mathscr {A}u\cdot \mathscr {A}u \, \,\mathrm {d}x \; - \int _{\Omega {\setminus } A} \sigma _2\mathscr {A}u\cdot \mathscr {A}u \, \,\mathrm {d}x \; + \; \text {Per }(A;\overline{\Omega }), \end{aligned}$$

where \(\Omega \) is a bounded Lipschitz domain, \(A\subset \mathbb {R}^N\) is a Borel set, \(u:\Omega \subset \mathbb {R}^N \rightarrow \mathbb {R}^d\), \(\mathscr {A}\) is an operator of gradient form, and \(\sigma _1, \sigma _2\) are two not necessarily well-ordered symmetric tensors. The class of operators of gradient form includes scalar- and vector-valued gradients, symmetrized gradients, and higher order gradients. Therefore, our results may be applied to a wide range of problems in elasticity, conductivity or plasticity models. In this context and under mild assumptions on f, we show for a solution (w, A), that the topological boundary of \(A \cap \Omega \) is locally a \(\mathrm {C}^1\)-hypersurface up to a closed set of zero \(\mathscr {H}^{N-1}\)-measure.

     

Multiple positive solutions of the stationary Keller–Segel system

We consider the stationary Keller–Segel equation

$$\begin{aligned} {\left\{ \begin{array}{ll} -\Delta v+v=\lambda e^v, \quad v>0 \quad &{} \text {in }\Omega ,\\ \partial _\nu v=0 &{}\text {on } \partial \Omega , \end{array}\right. } \end{aligned}$$

where \(\Omega \) is a ball. In the regime \(\lambda \rightarrow 0\), we study the radial bifurcations and we construct radial solutions by a gluing variational method. For any given \(n\in \mathbb {N}_0\), we build a solution having multiple layers at \(r_1,\ldots ,r_n\) by which we mean that the solutions concentrate on the spheres of radii \(r_i\) as \(\lambda \rightarrow 0\) (for all \(i=1,\ldots ,n\)). A remarkable fact is that, in opposition to previous known results, the layers of the solutions do not accumulate to the boundary of \(\Omega \) as \(\lambda \rightarrow 0\). Instead they satisfy an optimal partition problem in the limit.

     

Eigenvalue Counting Function for Robin Laplacians on Conical Domains

We study the discrete spectrum of the Robin Laplacian \(Q^{\Omega }_\alpha \) in \(L^2(\Omega )\), \(u\mapsto -\Delta u, \quad D_n u=\alpha u \text { on }\partial \Omega \), where \(D_n\) is the outer unit normal derivative and \(\Omega \subset {\mathbb {R}}^{3}\) is a conical domain with a regular cross-section \(\Theta \subset {\mathbb {S}}^2\), n is the outer unit normal, and \(\alpha >0\) is a fixed constant. It is known from previous papers that the bottom of the essential spectrum of \(Q^{\Omega }_\alpha \) is \(-\alpha ^2\) and that the finiteness of the discrete spectrum depends on the geometry of the cross-section. We show that the accumulation of the discrete spectrum of \(Q^\Omega _\alpha \) is determined by the discrete spectrum of an effective Hamiltonian defined on the boundary and far from the origin. By studying this model operator, we prove that the number of eigenvalues of \(Q^{\Omega }_\alpha \) in \((-\infty ,-\alpha ^2-\lambda )\), with \(\lambda >0\), behaves for \(\lambda \rightarrow 0\) as

$$\begin{aligned} \dfrac{\alpha ^2}{8\pi \lambda } \int _{\partial \Theta } \kappa _+(s)^2\mathrm {d}s +o\left( \frac{1}{\lambda }\right) , \end{aligned}$$

where \(\kappa _+\) is the positive part of the geodesic curvature of the cross-section boundary.

     

Improved Moser–Trudinger inequality of Tintarev type in dimension <Emphasis Type="Italic">n</Emphasis> and the existence of its extremal functions

Let \(\Omega \) be a smooth bounded domain in \(\mathbb R^n\) with \(n\ge 2\), \(W^{1,n}_0(\Omega )\) be the usual Sobolev space on \(\Omega \) and define \(\lambda _1(\Omega ) = \inf \nolimits _{u\in W^{1,n}_0(\Omega )\setminus \{0\}}\frac{\int _\Omega |\nabla u|^n \mathrm{d}x}{\int _\Omega |u|^n \mathrm{d}x}\). Based on the blow-up analysis method, we shall establish the following improved Moser–Trudinger inequality of Tintarev type

$$\begin{aligned} \sup _{u\in W^{1,n}_0(\Omega ), \int _\Omega |\nabla u|^n \mathrm{{d}}x-\alpha \int _\Omega |u|^n \mathrm{{d}}x \le 1} \int _\Omega \exp (\alpha _{n} |u|^{\frac{n}{n-1}}) \mathrm{{d}}x < \infty , \end{aligned}$$

for any \(0 \le \alpha < \lambda _1(\Omega )\), where \(\alpha _{n} = n \omega _{n-1}^{\frac{1}{n-1}}\) with \(\omega _{n-1}\) being the surface area of the unit sphere in \(\mathbb R^n\). This inequality is stronger than the improved Moser–Trudinger inequality obtained by Adimurthi and Druet (Differ Equ 29:295–322, 2004) in dimension 2 and by Yang (J Funct Anal 239:100–126, 2006) in higher dimension and extends a result of Tintarev (J Funct Anal 266:55–66, 2014) in dimension 2 to higher dimension. We also prove that the supremum above is attained for any \(0< \alpha < \lambda _{1}(\Omega )\). (The case \(\alpha =0\) corresponding to the Moser–Trudinger inequality is well known.)

     

Periodic solutions for some double-delayed differential equations

We prove the existence of positive \(\omega \)-periodic solutions for the double-delayed differential equation

$$\begin{aligned} x^{\prime }(t)-a(t)g(x(t))x(t)=-\lambda (b(t)f(x(t-\tau (t))+c(t)h(x(t-\nu (t))), \end{aligned}$$

where \(\lambda \) is a positive parameter, \(a,b,c,\tau ,\nu \in C(\mathbb {R}, \mathbb {R})\) are \(\omega \)-periodic functions with \(a,b\ge 0,a,b\not \equiv 0,f,g,h\in C([0,\infty ),\mathbb {R})\) with \(g>0\) on \((0,\infty ),\) \(\ h\) is bounded, f is either superlinear or sublinear at \(\infty \) and could change sign.

     

$$L^{\infty }$$-norm and energy quantization for the planar Lane–Emden problem with large exponent

For any smooth bounded domain \(\Omega \subset {\mathbb {R}}^2\), we consider positive solutions to

$$\begin{aligned} \left\{ \begin{array}{lr}-\Delta u= u^p &{} \text{ in } \Omega \\ u=0 &{} \text{ on } \partial \Omega \end{array}\right. \end{aligned}$$

which satisfy the uniform energy bound

$$\begin{aligned}p\Vert \nabla u\Vert _{\infty }\le C\end{aligned}$$

for \(p>1\). We prove convergence to \(\sqrt{e}\) as \(p\rightarrow +\infty \) of the \(L^{\infty }\)-norm of any solution. We further deduce quantization of the energy to multiples of \(8\pi e\), thus completing the analysis performed in De Marchis et al. (J Fixed Point Theory Appl 19:889–916, 2017).