On the Fučik spectrum of non-local elliptic operators

In this article, we study the Fu?ik spectrum of the fractional Laplace operator which is defined as the set of all \({(\alpha, \beta)\in \mathbb{R}^2}\) such that $$\quad \left.\begin{array}{ll}\quad (-\Delta)^s u = \alpha u^{+} - \beta u^{-} \quad {\rm in}\;\Omega \\ \quad \quad \quad u = 0 \quad \quad \quad \qquad {\rm in}\; \mathbb{R}^n{\setminus}\Omega.\end{array}\right\}$$ has a non-trivial solution u, where \({\Omega}\) is a bounded domain in \({\mathbb{R}^n}\) with Lipschitz boundary, n > 2s, \({s \in (0, 1)}\) . The existence of a first nontrivial curve \({\mathcal{C}}\) of this spectrum, some properties of this curve \({\mathcal{C}}\) , e.g. Lipschitz continuous, strictly decreasing and asymptotic behavior are studied in this article. A variational characterization of second eigenvalue of the fractional eigenvalue problem is also obtained. At the end, we study a nonresonance problem with respect to the Fu?ik spectrum.     

Full regularity of a free boundary problem with two phases

Let ?? be a bounded domain in ${\mathbb{R}^{n}, n\geq2}$ . We use ${\mathcal{M}_{\Omega}}$ to denote the collection of all pairs of (A, u) such that ${A\subset\Omega}$ is a set of finite perimeter and ${u\in H^{1}\left( \Omega\right)}$ satisfies $$u\left( x\right) =0\quad\text{a.e.}x\in A.$$ We consider the energy functional $$E_{\Omega}\left( A,u\right) =\int\limits_{\Omega}\left\vert\triangledown u\right\vert ^{2}+P_{\Omega}\left( A\right)$$ defined on ${\mathcal{M}_{\Omega}}$ , where P _??(A) denotes the perimeter of A inside ??. Let ${\left( A,u\right)\in\mathcal{M}_{\Omega}}$ be a minimizer with volume constraint. Our main result is that when n????7, u is locally Lipschitz and the free boundary ?A is analytic in ??.     

Principal Eigenvalue of p-Laplacian Operator in Exterior Domain

We consider an eigenvalue problem of the form $$\left.\begin{array}{cl}-\Delta_{p} u = \lambda\, K(x)|u|^{p-2}u \quad \mbox{in}\quad \Omega^e\\ u(x) =0 \quad \mbox{for}\quad \partial \Omega\\ u(x) \to 0 \quad \mbox{as}\quad |x| \to \infty,\end{array} \right \}$$ where \({\Omega \subset \mathrm{I\!R\!}^N}\) is a simply connected bounded domain, containing the origin, with C ² boundary \({\partial \Omega}\) and \({\Omega^e:=\mathrm{I\!R\!^N} \setminus \overline{\Omega}}\) is the exterior domain, \({1 < p < N, \Delta_{p}u:={\rm div}(|\nabla u|^{p-2} \nabla u)}\) is the p-Laplacian operator and \({K \in L^{\infty}(\Omega^e) \cap L^{N/p}(\Omega^e)}\) is a positive function. Existence and properties of principal eigenvalue λ ₁ and its corresponding eigenfunction are established which are generally known in bounded domain or in \({\mathrm{I\!R\!}^N}\) . We also establish the decay rate of positive eigenfunction as \({|x| \to \infty}\) as well as near ?Ω.     

Gamma-convergence of nonlocal perimeter functionals

Given ${\Omega\subset\mathbb{R}^{n}}$ open, connected and with Lipschitz boundary, and ${s\in (0, 1)}$ , we consider the functional $$\mathcal{J}_s(E,\Omega)\,=\, \int_{E\cap \Omega}\int_{E^c\cap\Omega}\frac{dxdy}{|x-y|^{n+s}}+\int_{E\cap \Omega}\int_{E^c\cap \Omega^c}\frac{dxdy}{|x-y|^{n+s}}\,+ \int_{E\cap \Omega^c}\int_{E^c\cap \Omega}\frac{dxdy}{|x-y|^{n+s}},$$ where ${E\subset\mathbb{R}^{n}}$ is an arbitrary measurable set. We prove that the functionals ${(1-s)\mathcal{J}_s(\cdot, \Omega)}$ are equi-coercive in ${L^1_{\rm loc}(\Omega)}$ as ${s\uparrow 1}$ and that $$\Gamma-\lim_{s\uparrow 1}(1-s)\mathcal{J}_s(E,\Omega)=\omega_{n-1}P(E,\Omega),\quad \text{for every }E\subset\mathbb{R}^{n}\,{\rm measurable}$$ where P(E, ??) denotes the perimeter of E in ?? in the sense of De Giorgi. We also prove that as ${s\uparrow 1}$ limit points of local minimizers of ${(1-s)\mathcal{J}_s(\cdot,\Omega)}$ are local minimizers of P(·, ??).     

Positive solutions of Schrödinger equations and fine regularity of boundary points

Given a Lipschitz domain Ω in ${{\mathbb R}^N}$ and a nonnegative potential V in Ω such that V(x) d(x, ?Ω)² is bounded we study the fine regularity of boundary points with respect to the Schrödinger operator L _V := Δ ? V in Ω. Using potential theoretic methods, several conditions are shown to be equivalent to the fine regularity of ${z \in \partial \Omega}$ . The main result is a simple (explicit if Ω is smooth) necessary and sufficient condition involving the size of V for ${z \in \partial \Omega}$ to be finely regular. An intermediate result consists in a majorization of ${\int_A \vert{\frac{ u} {d(.,\partial \Omega)}}\vert^2\, dx}$ for u positive harmonic in Ω and ${A \subset \Omega}$ . Conditions for almost everywhere regularity in a subset A of ?Ω are also given as well as an extension of the main results to a notion of fine ${\mathcal{ L}_1 \vert \mathcal{L}_0}$ -regularity, if ${\mathcal{L}_j = \mathcal{L} - V_j, V_0,\, V_1}$ being two potentials, with V ₀ ≤ V ₁ and ${\mathcal{L}}$ a second order elliptic operator.     

Boundary partial regularity for a class of biharmonic maps

We consider the Dirichlet problem for biharmonic maps u from a bounded, smooth domain ${\Omega\subset\mathbb R^n (n\ge 5)}$ to a compact, smooth Riemannian manifold ${N\subset{\mathbb {R}}^l}$ without boundary. For any smooth boundary data, we show that if u is a stationary biharmonic map that satisfies a certain boundary monotonicity inequality, then there exists a closed subset ${\Sigma\subset\overline{\Omega}}$ , with ${H^{n-4}(\Sigma)=0}$ , such that ${\displaystyle u\in C^\infty(\overline\Omega\setminus\Sigma, N)}$ .     

Sign-definiteness of q-eigenfunctions for a super-linear p-Laplacian eigenvalue problem

We consider the following q-eigenvalue problem for the p-Laplacian $$\left\{\begin{array}{ll}-{\rm div}\big( |\nabla u|^{p-2}\nabla u\big) = \lambda \|u\|_{L^{q}(\Omega)}^{p-q}|u|^{q-2}u \quad \quad\, {\rm in} \,\,\,\, \Omega\\ \quad\quad\quad \quad \quad \quad u = 0 \quad\qquad\qquad \quad\quad \,\,{\rm on } \,\,\,\, \partial\Omega,\end{array}\right.$$ where \({\lambda\in\mathbb{R},}\) p > 1, Ω is a bounded and smooth domain of \({\mathbb{R}^{N},}\) N > 1, \({1\leq q < p^{\star}}\) , \({p^{\star}=\frac{Np}{N-p}}\) if p < N and \({p^{\star}=\infty}\) if \({p\geq N.}\) Let λ _q denote the first q-eigenvalue. We prove that in the super-linear case, \({p < q < p^{\star},}\) there exists \({\epsilon_{q}>0}\) such that if \({\lambda\in(\lambda_{q},\lambda _{q}+\epsilon_{q})}\) is a q-eigenvalue, then any corresponding q-eigenfunction does not change sign in Ω. As a consequence of this result we obtain, in the super-linear case, the isolatedness of λ _q for those Ω such that the Lane–Emden problem $$\left\{\begin{array}{ll}-{\rm div}\big(|\nabla u|^{p-2}\nabla u\big) = |u|^{q-2}u \qquad\quad\quad\quad \,\,{\rm in}\,\,\,\Omega\\ \quad\quad\quad \quad \quad \quad u = 0 \quad\qquad\qquad \quad\quad \,{\rm on } \,\,\, \partial\Omega,\end{array}\right.$$ has exactly one positive solution.     

Regularity lifting of weak solutions for nonlinear sub-Laplace equations on homogeneous groups

Let G be a homogeneous group, and let X ₁, X ₂, … , X _m be left invariant real vector fields being homogeneous of degree one on G. We consider the following Dirichlet boundary value problem of the sub-Laplace equation involving the critical exponent and singular term: $$\left\{\begin{array}{ll}-\sum_{j=1}^{m}X_j^2u(x)-\frac{a}{\|x\|^\nu}u(x)=u^{\frac{Q+2}{Q-2}}(x), x\in\Omega,\\ u(x)=0, \quad\quad\quad\quad\quad\quad\quad\quad\quad\quad\quad\quad\,\,\,\, x\in \partial\Omega,\end{array}\right.$$ where ${\Omega\subset G}$ is a bounded domain with smooth boundary and ${\mathbf{0}\in\Omega}$ , Q is the homogeneous dimension of G, ${a\in \mathbb{R},\ \nu <2 }$ . We boost u to ${L^p(\Omega)}$ for any ${1\leq p < \infty}$ if ${u\in S^{1,2}_0(\Omega)}$ is a weak solution of the problem above.     

Stability results for the N-dimensional Schiffer conjecture via a perturbation method

Given a eigenvalue $\mu _{0m}^2$ of $-\Delta $ in the unit ball $B_1$ , with Neumann boundary conditions, we prove that there exists a class $\mathcal{D}$ of $C^{0,1}$ -domains, depending on $\mu _{0m} $ , such that if $u$ is a no trivial solution to the following problem $ \Delta u+\mu u=0$ in $\Omega , u=0$ on $\partial \Omega $ , and $ \int \nolimits _{\partial \Omega }\partial _{\mathbf{n}}u=0$ , with $\Omega \in \mathcal{D}$ , and $\mu =\mu _{0m}^2+o(1)$ , then $\Omega $ is a ball. Here $\mu $ is a eigenvalue of $-\Delta $ in $\Omega $ , with Neumann boundary conditions.     

Convergence of the eigenvalues of the p-Laplace operator as p goes to 1

Let $(\lambda ^k_p)_k$ be the usual sequence of min-max eigenvalues for the $p$ -Laplace operator with $p\in (1,\infty )$ and let $(\lambda ^k_1)_k$ be the corresponding sequence of eigenvalues of the 1-Laplace operator. For bounded $\Omega \subseteq \mathbb{R }^n$ with Lipschitz boundary the convergence $\lambda ^k_p\rightarrow \lambda ^k_1$ as $p\rightarrow 1$ is shown for all $k\in \mathbb{N }$ . The proof uses an approximation of $BV(\Omega )$ -functions by $C_0^\infty (\Omega )$ -functions in the sense of strict convergence on $\mathbb{R }^n$ .     

A contribution to stability theory for nonlinear Neumann problem

In this paper we study the stability of the solutions of some nonlinear Neumann problems, under perturbations of the domains in the Hausdorff complementary topology. We consider the problem $${{\left\{\begin{array}{c}-\text{ div}\;\left(a\left( x,\nabla u_{\Omega}\right)\right)=0 \;\text{in}\; \Omega \\ {a\left( x, \nabla u_{\Omega}\right) \cdot \nu=0\; \text{on}\; \partial\Omega}\end{array}\right.}}$$ where ${{\mathbf{R}^n \times \mathbf{R}^n \rightarrow \mathbf{R}^n}}$ is a Caratheodory function satisfying the standard monotonicity and growth conditions of order p, 1?<?p?<???. If ?? _h is a uniformly bounded sequence of connected open sets in R ⁿ , n ??? 2, we prove that if ${{\Omega_{h}^{c} \rightarrow \Omega^{c}}}$ in the Hausdorff metric, ${|\Omega_{h}| \rightarrow |\Omega|}$ and the geodetic distances satisfy the inequality ${d_{\Omega}\left( x,y\right) \leq \liminf_{h} d_{\Omega_{h}} \left( x,y\right)}$ for every ${x, y \in \Omega,}$ then ${\nabla u_{\Omega_h} \rightarrow\nabla u_{\Omega}}$ strongly in L ^p , provided that W ^{1, ??}(??) is dense in the space L ^{1, p} (??) of all functions whose gradient belongs to L ^p (??, R ⁿ ).     

Quasilinear elliptic and parabolic Robin problems on Lipschitz domains

We prove Hölder continuity up to the boundary for solutions of quasi-linear degenerate elliptic problems in divergence form, not necessarily of variational type, on Lipschitz domains with Neumann and Robin boundary conditions. This includes the p-Laplace operator for all ${p \in (1,\infty)}$ , but also operators with unbounded coefficients. Based on the elliptic result we show that the corresponding parabolic problem is well-posed in the space ${\mathrm{C}(\overline{\Omega})}$ provided that the coefficients satisfy a mild monotonicity condition. More precisely, we show that the realization of the elliptic operator in ${\mathrm{C}(\overline{\Omega})}$ is m-accretive and densely defined. Thus it generates a non-linear strongly continuous contraction semigroup on ${\mathrm{C}(\overline{\Omega})}$ .     

Lipschitz regularity for constrained local minimizers of convex variational integrals with a wide range of anisotropy

We establish interior gradient bounds for functions ${u \in W^1_{1, {\rm loc}} (\Omega)}$ which locally minimize the variational integral ${J [u, \Omega] = \int_\Omega h \left( |\nabla u| \right) dx}$ under the side condition ${u \ge \Psi}$ a.e. on Ω with obstacle ${\Psi}$ being locally Lipschitz. Here h denotes a rather general N-function allowing (p, q)-ellipticity with arbitrary exponents 1 < p ≤ q < ∞. Our arguments are based on ideas developed in Bildhauer et al. (Z Anal Anw 20:959–985, 2001) combined with techniques originating in Fuchs (2011).     

Uniqueness of integrable solutions to {\nabla \zeta=G \zeta, \zeta|_\Gamma = 0} for integrable tensor coefficients G and applications to elasticity

Let ${\Omega \subset \mathbb{R}^{N}}$ be a Lipschitz domain and Γ be a relatively open and non-empty subset of its boundary ${\partial\Omega}$ . We show that the solution to the linear first-order system $$\nabla \zeta = G\zeta, \, \, \zeta|_\Gamma = 0 \quad \quad \quad (1)$$ is unique if ${G \in \textsf{L}^{1}(\Omega; \mathbb{R}^{(N \times N) \times N})}$ and ${\zeta \in \textsf{W}^{1,1}(\Omega; \mathbb{R}^{N})}$ . As a consequence, we prove $$||| \cdot ||| : \textsf{C}_{o}^{\infty}(\Omega, \Gamma; \mathbb{R}^{3}) \rightarrow [0, \infty), \, \, u \mapsto \parallel {\rm sym}(\nabla uP^{-1})\parallel_{\textsf{L}^{2}(\Omega)}$$ to be a norm for ${P \in \textsf{L}^{\infty}(\Omega; \mathbb{R}^{3 \times 3})}$ with Curl ${P \in \textsf{L}^{p}(\Omega; \mathbb{R}^{3 \times 3})}$ , Curl ${P^{-1} \in \textsf{L}^{q}(\Omega; \mathbb{R}^{3 \times 3})}$ for some p, q > 1 with 1/p + 1/q = 1 as well as det ${P \geq c^+ > 0}$ . We also give a new and different proof for the so-called ‘infinitesimal rigid displacement lemma’ in curvilinear coordinates: Let ${\Phi \in \textsf{H}^{1}(\Omega; \mathbb{R}^{3})}$ satisfy sym ${(\nabla\Phi^\top\nabla\Psi) = 0}$ for some ${\Psi \in \textsf{W}^{1,\infty}(\Omega; \mathbb{R}^{3}) \cap \textsf{H}^{2}(\Omega; \mathbb{R}^{3})}$ with det ${\nabla\Psi \geq c^+ > 0}$ . Then, there exist a constant translation vector ${a \in \mathbb{R}^{3}}$ and a constant skew-symmetric matrix ${A \in \mathfrak{so}(3)}$ , such that ${\Phi = A\Psi + a}$ .     

Singular limits for Liouville-type equations on the flat two-torus

We consider the problem $$\begin{aligned} -\Delta u=\varepsilon ^{2}e^{u}- \frac{1}{|\Omega |}\int _\Omega \varepsilon ^{2} e^{u}+ {4\pi N\over |\Omega |} - 4 \pi N\delta _p, \quad \text{ in} {\Omega }, \quad \int _\Omega u=0 \end{aligned}$$ in a flat two-torus $\Omega $ with periodic boundary conditions, where $\varepsilon >0,\,|\Omega |$ is the area of the $\Omega $ , $N>0$ and $\delta _p$ is a Dirac mass at $p\in \Omega $ . We prove that if $1\le m<N+1$ then there exists a family of solutions $\{u_\varepsilon \}_{\varepsilon }$ such that $\varepsilon ^{2}e^{u_\varepsilon }\rightharpoonup 8\pi \sum _{i=1}^m\delta _{q_i}$ as $\varepsilon \rightarrow 0$ in measure sense for some different points $q_{1}, \ldots , q_{m}$ . Furthermore, points $q_i$ , $i=1,\dots ,m$ are different from $p$ .     

A maximum modulus theorem for the Oseen problem

Classical solutions of the Oseen problem are studied on an exterior domain Ω with Ljapunov boundary in R ³. It is proved a maximum modulus estimate of the following form: If ${{\bf u}\in C^2(\Omega)^3\cap C^0(\overline \Omega)^3}$ and ${p \in C^1(\Omega ), -\Delta {\bf u}+2\lambda \partial_1 {\bf u}+\nabla p=0, \nabla \cdot {\bf u}=0}$ in Ω, and if ${|{\bf u}| \le M}$ on ${\partial \Omega , \limsup |{\bf u}({\bf x})|\le M}$ as ${|{\bf x}|\to \infty }$ , then ${|{\bf u}({\bf x})|\le c M}$ in Ω. Here the constant c depends only on Ω and λ.     

Global solutions in higher dimensions to a fourth-order parabolic equation modeling epitaxial thin-film growth

The initial-value problem for $$u_t=-\Delta^2 u - \mu\Delta u - \lambda \Delta |\nabla u|^2 + f(x)\qquad \qquad (\star)$$ is studied under the conditions ${{\frac{\partial}{\partial\nu}} u={\frac{\partial}{\partial\nu}} \Delta u=0}$ on the boundary of a bounded convex domain ${\Omega \subset {\mathbb{R}}^n}$ with smooth boundary. This problem arises in the modeling of the evolution of a thin surface when exposed to molecular beam epitaxy. Correspondingly the physically most relevant spatial setting is obtained when n?=?2, but previous mathematical results appear to concentrate on the case n?=?1. In this work, it is proved that when n??? 3,??? ?? 0, ???>?0 and ${f \in L^\infty(\Omega)}$ satisfies ${{\int_\Omega} f \ge 0}$ , for each prescribed initial distribution ${u_0 \in L^\infty(\Omega)}$ fulfilling ${{\int_\Omega} u_0 \ge 0}$ , there exists at least one global weak solution ${u \in L^2_{loc}([0,\infty); W^{1,2}(\Omega))}$ satisfying ${{\int_\Omega} u(\cdot,t) \ge 0}$ for a.e. t?>?0, and moreover, it is shown that this solution can be obtained through a Rothe-type approximation scheme. Furthermore, under an additional smallness condition on??? and ${\|f\|_{L^\infty(\Omega)}}$ , it is shown that there exists a bounded set ${S\subset L^1(\Omega)}$ which is absorbing for ${(\star)}$ in the sense that for any such solution, we can pick T?>?0 such that ${e^{2\lambda u(\cdot,t)}\in S}$ for all t?>?T, provided that ?? is a ball and u ₀ and f are radially symmetric with respect to x?=?0. This partially extends similar absorption results known in the spatially one-dimensional case. The techniques applied to derive appropriate compactness properties via a priori estimates include straightforward testing procedures which lead to integral inequalities involving, for instance, the functional ${{\int_\Omega} e^{2\lambda u}dx}$ , but also the use of a maximum principle for second-order elliptic equations.