Existence results for semilinear elliptic variational inequalities with changing sign nonlinearities

In this paper we present some existence results for a class of semilinear elliptic variational inequalities, depending on a real parameter λ, with changing sign nonlinearities. The fundamental tool to prove the existence result is a penalization method combined with the Mountain Pass Theorem and the Linking Theorem, respectively in the case λ < λ ₁ and λ ≥ λ ₁, where λ₁ is the first eigenvalue of the uniformly elliptic operator A involved in the variational inequality.