Pointwise bounds for positive supersolutions of nonlinear elliptic problems involving the $p$-Laplacian and application

Abstract: We derive a priori bounds for positive supersolutions of $ - \Delta_{p} u = \rho(x) f(u) $, where $p>1$ and $\Delta_{p}$ is the $p$-Laplace operator, in a smooth bounded domain of $R^{N}$ with zero Dirichlet boundary conditions. We apply the results to nonlinear elliptic eigenvalue problem $ - \Delta_{p} u = \lambda f(u) $, with Dirichlet boundary condition, where $ f $ is a nondecreasing continuous differentiable function on $[0,\infty]$ such that $ f(0) > 0 $, $ f(t)^{\frac{1}{p-1}} $ is superlinear at infinity, and give sharp upper and lower bounds for the extremal parameter $ \lambda_{p}^{*} $. In particular, we consider the nonlinearities $ f(u) = e^u $ and $ f(u) = (1+u)^{m} $ ($ m > p-1 $) and give explicit estimates on $ \lambda_{p}^{*} $. As a by-product of our results, we obtain a lower bound for the principal eigenvalue of the $ p $-Laplacian that improves obtained results in the recent literature for some range of $ p $ and $ N $.