An existence result for a nonlinear transmission problems

TL;DR

This paper proves the existence of solutions for a class of nonlinear transmission problems using potential theory and the Leray-Schauder principle, highlighting conditions for existence, non-uniqueness, and local uniqueness.

Contribution

It provides explicit conditions ensuring existence of solutions to nonlinear transmission problems and analyzes their uniqueness properties.

Findings

Existence of solutions under explicit conditions.

Solutions may not be unique or locally unique in general.

Small nonlinear perturbations can guarantee local uniqueness.

Abstract

Let $\Omega^o$ and $\Omega^i$ be open bounded subsets of $\mathbb{R}^n$ of class $C^{1,\alpha}$ such that the closure of $\Omega^i$ is contained in $\Omega^o$. Let $f^o$ be a function in $C^{1,\alpha}(\partial\Omega^o)$ and let $F$ and $G$ be continuous functions from $\partial\Omega^i\times\mathbb{R}$ to $\mathbb{R}$. By exploiting an argument based on potential theory and on the Leray-Schauder principle we show that under suitable and completely explicit conditions on $F$ and $G$ there exists at least one pair of continuous functions $(u^o, u^i)$ such that \[ \left\{ \begin{array}{ll} \Delta u^o=0&\text{in }\Omega^o\setminus\mathrm{cl}\Omega^i\,,\\ \Delta u^i=0&\text{in }\Omega^i\,,\\ u^o(x)=f^o(x)&\text{for all }x\in\partial\Omega^o\,,\\ u^o(x)=F(x,u^i(x))&\text{for all }x\in\partial\Omega^i\,,\\ \nu_{\Omega^i}\cdot\nabla u^o(x)-\nu_{\Omega^i}\cdot\nabla u^i(x)=G(x,u^i(x))&\text{for all }x\in\partial\Omega^i\,, \end{array} \right. \] where the last equality is attained in certain weak sense. In a simple example we show that such a pair of functions $(u^o, u^i)$ is in general neither unique nor local unique. If instead the fourth condition of the problem is obtained by a small nonlinear perturbation of a homogeneous linear condition, then we can prove the existence of at least one classical solution which is in addition locally unique.