On a semilinear elliptic problem without ( PS) condition

Abstract

An existence result for semilinear elliptic problems whose associated functionals do not satisfy a Palais–Smale condition is proved. The nonlinearity of our problem fits none of the conditions in Ambrosetti and Rabinowitz (J. Funct. Anal. 14 (1973) 349), de Figueiredo et al. (J. Math. Pures Appl. 61 (1982) 41) and Gidas and Spruck (Comm. Part. Diff. Eq. 6 (1981) 883). Some truncation happens to be essential, and in the argument some new results on Liouville-type theorems are established.