Liouville Type Theorems for Elliptic Equations with Gradient Terms

Abstract

In this paper we obtain Liouville type theorems for nonnegative supersolutions of the elliptic problem ${-\Delta u + b(x)|\nabla u| = c(x)u}$ in exterior domains of ${\mathbb{R}^N}$. We show that if lim ${{\rm inf}_{x \longrightarrow \infty} 4c(x) - b(x)^2 > 0}$ then no positive supersolutions can exist, provided the coefficients b and c verify a further restriction related to the fundamental solutions of the homogeneous problem. The weights b and c are allowed to be unbounded. As an application, we also consider supersolutions to the problems ${-\Delta u + b|x|^{\lambda}|{\nabla} u| = c|x|^{\mu} u^p}$ and ${-\Delta u + be^{\lambda |x|}|\nabla u| = ce^{\mu |x|}u^p}$, where p > 0 and λ, μ ≥ 0, and obtain nonexistence results which are shown to be optimal.