Conformal metrics on the unit ball with prescribed mean curvature (Q289857)

In this paper, the authors consider the prescribed mean curvature problem on the unit ball. More precisely, let \((\mathbb B^{n+1},g_E)\), \(n\geq 2\), be the \((n+1)\)-dimensional unit ball with Euclidean metric \(g_E\) and suppose that \(f:\partial\mathbb B^{n+1}=\mathbb S^n\to\mathbb R\) is a smooth function. Then the question is to find a conformal metric \(g= u^{{4}/(n-1)}g_E\) such that, its interior scalar curvature vanishes and the boundary \(\mathbb S^n\) is of mean curvature \(f\) with respect to the new metric \(g\). It turns out that the problem is equivalent to seeking a positive harmonic function \(u\) on the ball with non-linear boundary condition \[ \Delta_{g_E}u=0 \text{ on }\mathbb B^{n+1}\text{ and }\frac{2}{n-1}\,\frac{\partial u}{\partial\nu_0}+u=fu^{\frac{n+1}{n-1}} \text{ on }\mathbb S^n\eqno{(\ast)}. \] The main result of the paper under review is the following: Let \(n\geq 2\) and \(f:\mathbb S^n\to\mathbb R\) be a positive smooth Morse function satisfying the non-degeneracy condition \[ (\Delta_{\mathbb S^n}f)^2+|\nabla f|^2_{\mathbb S^n}\neq 0 \] and the simple bubble condition \[ \max_{\mathbb S^n}f<\delta_n\,\min_{\mathbb S^n}f, \] where \(\delta_n= 2^{1/n}\), when \(n= 2\), and \(\delta_n=2^{1/(n-1)}\), when \(n\geq 3\). Consider the following numbers associated with \(f\) \[ m_i=\#\{\theta\in\mathbb S^n;\nabla_{\mathbb S^n}f(\theta)=0,\Delta_{\mathbb S^n}f(\theta)<0, \mathrm{ind}(f,\theta)=n-i\}, \] where \(0\leq i\leq n\) and \(\mathrm{ind}(f,\theta)\) denotes the Morse index of \(f\) at a critical point \(\theta\). If the following algebraic system \[ m_0=1+k_0,\quad m_i=k_{i-1}+k_i\text{ for }1\leq i\leq n,\quad k_n=0, \] with coefficients \(k_i\geq 0\), where \(0\leq i\leq n\), has no non-trivial solutions, then the equation \((\ast)\) admits at least one positive solution.