Calc. Var. DOI 10.1007/s00526-014-0788-8 Calculus of Variations Superlinear critical resonant problems with small forcing term Mabel Cuesta · Colette De Coster Received: 15 May 2014 / Accepted: 10 October 2014 © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014 Abstract We prove the existence of solutions of a class of quasilinear elliptic problems with Dirichlet boundary conditions of the following form Lu = g(u ) - f in , u X , where R N is a bounded domain, N 2, the differential operator is Lu = -div(|∇u | p-2 u ) - λ 1 |u | p-2 u with X = W 1, p 0 () or Lu = 2 u - λ 1 u with X = H 2 0 (), the nonlinearity is given by g(u ) = (u + ) q or g(u ) =|u | q -1 u i.e. it is a superlinear, at most critical, term and f is a small reaction term. We give an abstract formulation for which solu- tions are found by minimization on an appropriate subset of the Nehari manifold associated to our problem. Our method can be also applied to other related problems involving indefinite weights. Mathematics Subject Classification 35J20 · 35J70 · 35P05 · 35P30 Communicated by A. Malchiodi. M. Cuesta (B ) Université du Littoral Côte d’Opale, LMPA, FR CNRS 2956, 50, rue F. Buisson, B.P. 699, 62228 Calais, France e-mail: Mabel.Cuesta@lmpa.univ-littoral.fr C. De Coster Université de Valenciennes et du Hainaut Cambrésis, LAMAV, FR CNRS 2956, Institut des Sciences et Techniques de Valenciennes, 59313 Valenciennes Cedex 9, France e-mail: Colette.DeCoster@univ-valenciennes.fr 123