Local behaviour of singular solutions for nonlinear elliptic equations in divergence form

Abstract

We consider the following class of nonlinear elliptic equations

$$\begin{array}{ll}{-}{\rm div}(\mathcal{A}(|x|)\nabla u) +u^q=0\quad {\rm in}\; B_1(0)\setminus\{0\}, \end{array}$$

where q > 1 and ${\mathcal{A}}$ is a positive C ¹(0,1] function which is regularly varying at zero with index ${\vartheta}$ in (2−N,2). We prove that all isolated singularities at zero for the positive solutions are removable if and only if ${\Phi\not\in L^q(B_1(0))}$ , where ${\Phi}$ denotes the fundamental solution of ${-{\rm div}(\mathcal{A}(|x|)\nabla u)=\delta_0}$ in ${\mathcal D'(B_1(0))}$ and δ₀ is the Dirac mass at 0. Moreover, we give a complete classification of the behaviour near zero of all positive solutions in the more delicate case that ${\Phi\in L^q(B_1(0))}$ . We also establish the existence of positive solutions in all the categories of such a classification. Our results apply in particular to the model case ${\mathcal{A}(|x|)=|x|^\vartheta}$ with ${\vartheta\in (2-N,2)}$ .