The Brezis–Nirenberg problem for fractional elliptic operators

Abstract

Let be a uniformly elliptic operator in divergence form in a bounded open subset Ω of . We study the effect of the operator on the existence and nonexistence of positive solutions of the nonlocal Brezis–Nirenberg problem urn:x-wiley:0025584X:media:mana201600072:mana201600072-math-0004where denotes the fractional power of with zero Dirichlet boundary values on , , and λ is a real parameter. By assuming for all and near some point , we prove existence theorems for any , where denotes the first Dirichlet eigenvalue of . Our existence result holds true for and in the interior case () and for and in the boundary case (). Nonexistence for star‐shaped domains is obtained for any .