Advanced Search

We consider linear elliptic equations $-\Delta u+q\left(x\right)u=\lambda u+f$ in bounded Lipschitz domains $D\subset {ℝ}^N$ with mixed boundary conditions $\partial u/\partial n=\sigma \left(x\right)\lambda u+g$ on $\partial D$. The main feature of this boundary value problem is the appearance of $\lambda$ both in the equation and in the boundary condition. In general we make no assumption on the sign of the coefficient $\sigma \left(x\right)$. We study positivity principles and anti-maximum principles. One of our main results states that if $\sigma$ is somewhere negative, $q\ge 0$ and ${\int }_{D}q\left(x\right)dx>0$ then there exist two eigenvalues ${\lambda }_{-1}$, ${\lambda }_1$ such the positivity principle...