New nonexistence results for elliptic equations with supercritical nonlinearity (Q1343200)

The author considers existence and number of non-vanishing solutions of the Dirichlet problem with zero boundary conditions for a semilinear elliptic equation in a smooth bounded domain of dimension at least four. Assumptions are made on the growth of the nonlinear term and on the topological properties of the domain. The nonlinear term is assumed to be equivalent to a power function at infinity (the exponent being related to the critical Sobolev exponent). The author shows that for each \(k\) there exists a domain that is homotopically equivalent to the \(k\)-sphere and a number \(p\), depending on \(k\) and on the dimension, and such that for exponents larger than \(p\) the problem has no solutions of the required type; for exponents smaller than \(p\) it has infinitely many solutions, at least one of them positive.