A large class of nonlocal elliptic equations with singular nonlinearities

Abstract: In this work, we address the questions of existence, uniqueness, and boundary behavior of the positive weak-dual solution of equation $\mathbb{L}\gamma^s u = \mathcal{F}(u)$, posed in a $C^2$ bounded domain $\Omega \subset \mathbb{R}^N$, with appropriate homogeneous boundary or exterior Dirichlet conditions. The operator $\mathbb{L}\gamma^s$ belongs to a general class of nonlocal operators including typical fractional Laplacians such as restricted fractional Laplacian, censored fractional Laplacian and spectral fractional Laplacian. The nonlinear term $\mathcal{F}(u)$ covers three different amalgamation of nonlinearities: a purely singular nonlinearity $\mathcal{F}(u) = u^{-q}$ ($q>0$), a singular nonlinearity with a source term $\mathcal{F}(u) = u^{-q} + f(u)$, and a singular nonlinearity with an absorption term $\mathcal{F}(u) = u^{-q}-g(u)$. Based on a delicate analysis of the Green kernel associated to $\mathbb{L}\gamma^s$, we develop a new unifying approach that empowered us to construct a theory for equation $\mathbb{L}\gamma^s u = \mathcal{F}(u)$. In particular, we show the existence of two critical exponents $q^{\ast}_{s, \gamma}$ and $q^{\ast \ast}_{s, \gamma}$ which provides a fairly complete classification of the weak-dual solutions via their boundary behavior. Various types of nonlocal operators are discussed to exemplify the wide applicability of our theory.