ON THE MINIMAL ENERGY SOLUTION IN A QUASILINEAR ELLIPTIC EQUATION

In this paper we seek a positive, radially symmetric and energy minimizing solution of an m-Laplacian equation, -div$($\mid${\nabla}u$\mid$^{m-2}$\mid${\nabla}u)\;=\;h(u)$. In the variational sense, the solutions are the critical points of the associated functional called the energy, $J(v)\;=\;\frac{1}{m}\;\int_{R^N}\;$\mid${\nabla}v$\mid$^m\;-\;\int_{R^N}\;H(v)dx,\;where\;H(v)\;=\;{\int_0}^v\;h(t)dt$. A positive, radially symmetric critical point of J can be obtained by solving the constrained minimization problem; minimize{$\int_{R^N}$\mid${\nabla}u$\mid$^mdx$\mid$\;\int_{R^N}\;H(u)d;=\;1$}. Moreover, the solution minimizes J(v).