Low energy nodal solutions to the Yamabe equation (Q2304438)

This paper is about the following Yamabe problem on the sphere \((\mathcal{S}^n, g_0^n)\), \[ -\Delta_{g_0^n}u+\frac{n(n-2)}{4}u=\frac{n(n-2)}{4}|u|^{p_n-1}u\;\;\mbox{on}\;\;\mathcal{S}^n,\tag{1} \] where \(\Delta_{g_0^n}=\operatorname{div}_{g_0^n}\nabla_{g_0^n}\) is the Laplace-Beltrami operator, and \(p_n=\frac{n+2}{n-2}.\) Considering the space of functions \(w\circ f,\) where \(f\) is an isoparametric function on the sphere with suitable properties, the authors reduce (1) to the singular boundary value problem for the ODE \[w''+\frac{h(r)}{\sin\, r}w'+\frac{n(n-2)}{4l^2}[|w|^{p_n-1}w-w]=0\;\;\mbox{on}\;\;[0,\pi],\tag{2}\] \[ w'(0)=w'(\pi)=0,\] where \(h(r)=0.5(m_1+m_2)\cos\, r-0.5(m_2-m_1)\), \(l\) is the number of distinct principal curvatures, and \(m_1\) and \(m_2\) are two different multiplicities of the principal curvatures. It is then shown that, if \(m_1, m_2<n-1\), then BVP (2) admits a sequence of sign changing solutions \(w_k\) having exactly \(k\) zeros in \([0,\pi].\) As a consequence of this, the authors prove that if, \(S\subset \mathcal{S}^n\) is an isoparametric hypersurface with \(l\not= 1\) different principal curvatures, then for any natural number \(k\) problem (1) has a nodal solution \(u_k\) such that its nodal set has exactly \(k\) connected components, each of them is an isoparametric hypersurface diffeomorphic to \(S\). Besides, \[\int_{\mathcal{S}^n}|u_k|^{p_n+1}dV_{g_0^n}\to\infty\;\;\mbox{as}\;\;k\to\infty.\]