Multiplicity of positive solutions for a class of nonhomogeneous elliptic equations in the hyperbolic space

Abstract

The paper is concerned with positive solutions to problems of the type \[ -\Delta_{\mathbb{B}^{N}} u - \lambda u = a(x) |u|^{p-1}\;u + f \text{ in }\mathbb{B}^{N}, \quad u \in H^{1}{(\mathbb{B}^{N})}, \] where $\mathbb {B}^N$ denotes the hyperbolic space, $1< p<2^*-1:=\frac {N+2}{N-2}$ , $\;\lambda < \frac {(N-1)^2}{4}$ , and $f \in H^{-1}(\mathbb {B}^{N})$ ( $f \not \equiv 0$ ) is a non-negative functional. The potential $a\in L^\infty (\mathbb {B}^N)$ is assumed to be strictly positive, such that $\lim _{d(x, 0) \rightarrow \infty } a(x) \rightarrow 1,$ where $d(x,\, 0)$ denotes the geodesic distance. First, the existence of three positive solutions is proved under the assumption that $a(x) \leq 1$ . Then the case $a(x) \geq 1$ is considered, and the existence of two positive solutions is proved. In both cases, it is assumed that $\mu ( \{ x : a(x) \neq 1\}) > 0.$ Subsequently, we establish the existence of two positive solutions for $a(x) \equiv 1$ and prove asymptotic estimates for positive solutions using barrier-type arguments. The proofs for existence combine variational arguments, key energy estimates involving hyperbolic bubbles.