Existence of nodal solutions for quasilinear elliptic problems in $\mathbb{R}^N$

Abstract: We prove the existence of one positive, one negative, and one sign-changing solution of a $p$-Laplacian equation on $\mathbb{R}^N$, with a $p$-superlinear subcritical term. Sign-changing solutions of quasilinear elliptic equations set on the whole of $\mathbb{R}^N$ have only been scarcely investigated in the literature. Our assumptions here are similar to those previously used by some authors in bounded domains, and our proof uses fairly elementary critical point theory, based on constraint minimization on the nodal Nehari set. The lack of compactness due to the unbounded domain is overcome by working in a suitable weighted Sobolev space.