Uniqueness and sign properties of minimizers in a quasilinear indefinite problem

Abstract: Let $1<q<p$ and $a\in C(\overline{\Omega})$ be sign-changing, where $\Omega$ is a bounded and smooth domain of $\mathbb{R}^{N}$. We show that the functional [ I_{q}(u):=\int_{\Omega}\left( \frac{1}{p}|\nabla u|^{p}-\frac{1}{q}a(x)|u|^{q}\right) , ] has exactly one nonnegative minimizer $U_{q}$ (in $W_{0}^{1,p}(\Omega)$ or $W^{1,p}(\Omega)$). In addition, we prove that $U_{q}$ is the only possible \textit{positive} solution of the associated Euler-Lagrange equation, which shows that this equation has at most one positive solution. Furthermore, we show that if $q$ is close enough to $p$ then $U_{q}$ is positive, which also guarantees that minimizers of $I_{q}$ do not change sign. Several of these results are new even for $p=2$.