Nonsymmetric solutions for some variational problems (Q5935345)

The author first proves existence of traveling wave solutions of some special cases of the so-called Kadomtsev-Petviashvili equations which are nonradial in the transverse variables. More precisely, solutions of the form \(u(x_1- ct,x_2,x_3,x_4,x_5)\), non-radially symmetric in \((x_2,x_3,x_4,x_5)\), are obtained for the system \[ u_t+ u^p\cdot u_{x_1}+ \partial^7_{x_1} u- v_{x_2}- w_{x_3}- \eta_{x_4}- \nu_{x_5}= 0,\;v_{x_1}= u_{x_2},\;w_{x_1}= u_{x_3},\;\eta_{x_1}= u_{x_4},\;\nu_{x_1}= u_{x_5} \] in the whole five-dimensional space for \(p= m/n> 0\), \(m\) and \(n\) relatively prime, \(n\) odd and also for a slightly modified equation with a nonlinearity of the form \[ {\partial\over\partial x_1} \Biggl(Q(x)\cdot{u^{p+1}\over p+ 1}\Biggr). \] The main tool is the minimax method, in particular the mountain pass lemma, and some compactness results. Topological reasons make difficult the treatment of the problem when the number of transverse variables is less than 4. In a last section a variant of the method is applied to a nonlinear elliptic equation of the form of the nonlinear Euclidean scalar field equation. A nonradial variational solution is obtained for the equation \[ -\Delta u+ u=| u|^{p-2} u,\quad 2< p< 10/3, \] in \(\mathbb{R}^5\). This result completes a previous theorem of Bartsch and Willem (1993) on the 4- and greater than 5-dimensional cases. The same result in lower dimensions seems more difficult for topological reasons, too.