Dirichlet problems for several nonlocal operators via variational and topological methods

FRASSU, SILVIA

2021-02-26

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Abstract

The main topic of the thesis is the study of elliptic differential equations with fractional order driven by nonlocal operators, as the fractional p-Laplacian, the fractional Laplacian for p=2, the general nonlocal operator and its anisotropic version. Recently, great attention has been focused on the study of fractional and nonlocal operators of elliptic type, both for pure mathematical research and in view of concrete real-world applications. This type of operators arises in a quite natural way in many different contexts, such as, among others, game theory, image processing, optimization, phase transition, anomalous diffusion, crystal dislocation, water waves, population dynamics and geophysical fluid dynamics. The main reason is that nonlocal operators are the infinitesimal generators of Lévy-type stochastic processes. Such processes extend the concept of Brownian motion, where the infinitesimal generator is the Laplace operator, and may contain jump discontinuities. Our aim is to show existence and multiplicity results for nonlinear elliptic Dirichlet problems, driven by a nonlocal operator, by applying variational and topological methods. Such methods usually exploit the special form of the nonlinearities entering the problem, for instance its symmetries, and offer complementary information. They are powerful tools to show the existence of multiple solutions and establish qualitative results on these solutions, for instance information regarding their location. The topological and variational approach provides not just existence of a solution, usually several solutions, but allow to achieve relevant knowledge about the behavior and properties of the solutions, which is extremely useful because generally the problems cannot be effectively solved, so the precise expression of the solutions is unknown. As a specific example of property of a solution that we look for is the sign of the solution, for example to be able to determine whether it is positive, or negative, or nodal (i.e., sign changing).