On the existence and the profile of nodal solutions of elliptic equations involving critical growth (Q2493994)

The authors consider the boundary value problem \[ -\Delta u = | u| ^{p-1-\varepsilon}u\;\text{ in } \Omega,\qquad u=0\;\text{ on } \partial\Omega,\tag{\(*\)} \] where \(\Omega\subset \mathbb R^N\) is a smooth bounded domain and \(p+1 = 2^*\equiv 2N/(N-2)\) is the critical Sobolev exponent. It is shown that if \(C_2(\Omega)\) denotes the configuration space of unordered pairs of elements of \(\Omega\), then for \(\varepsilon>0\) small enough, (\(*\)) has at least \(\text{cat}(C_2(\Omega))\) pairs of solutions \(\pm u_\varepsilon^i\) (cat is the Lusternik-Schnirelman category). Moreover, these solutions change sign exactly once, they blow up positively and negatively as \(\varepsilon\to 0\) and, if some additional conditions are satisfied, the set \(\{x\in\Omega: u_\varepsilon^i(x)=0\}\) meets the boundary of \(\Omega\). Since \(\text{cat}(C_2(\Omega))\geq N\), there are always at least \(N\) pairs of solutions for small \(\varepsilon\). The existence part of the proof uses a reduction to a variational problem on a finite-dimensional manifold which is homotopy equivalent to \(C_2(\Omega)\). Then a minimax argument shows the reduced functional has at least \(\text{cat}(C_2(\Omega))\) critical points which correspond to pairs of solutions of (\(*\)).