Existence and uniqueness results for semilinear Dirichlet problems in annuli (Q913101)

The authors study the existence and uniqueness of positive radial solutions of the equation \(\Delta u+f(r,u)=0\), with zero boundary data, in an annulus. They also prove a result about oscillating solutions with a prescribed number of zeros. The existence result is proved under some quite general conditions on f. For uniqueness, however, it is assumed that the nonlinearity is on the following special form \(f(r,u)=r^{-2-\rho}f_ 0(r^{\rho}u)\) for some real number \(\rho\). Also \(f_ 0\) is assumed to satisfy some additional conditions.