Non-compactness and multiplicity results for the Yamabe problem on \(S^n\) (Q5929872)

For a given compact Riemannian manifold \((M^n,g)\) \((n \geq 3)\), the Yamabe problem consists in finding some metric \(\widetilde g\) in the conformal class \([g]\) of \(g\) such that its scalar curvature \(\widetilde S\) is a constant function. Let \((M^n,g)\) \((n \geq 3)\) be a compact Riemannian \(n\)-manifold with scalar curvature \(S\). If \(\widetilde g\) is a metric conformal to \(g\), i.e., \(\widetilde g = u^{\frac{4}{n-2}} g\) for some positive function \(u\) on \(M\) whose scalar curvature \(\widetilde S = 1\), then the problem is equivalent to finding a solution to the equation on \(M\) (1) \(\Delta u - \frac{n-2}{4(n-1)} S u + u^{\frac{n+2}{n-2}} = 0\). R. Schoen proved that if \((M, g)\) is a compact \(C^\infty\) manifold not conformally equivalent to the standard sphere, then the set of solutions of problem (1) is compact in \(C^{2, \alpha}(M)\). And it is natural to ask whether the result of Schoen can be extended to \(C^k\) metrics on manifolds of arbitrary dimension. The paper under review is to show that this is not the case. The authors show that there exist metrics \(g_\varepsilon\) on \(S^n\) which are perturbations of the standard metric \(g_0\) such that the Yamabe problem possesses a sequence of solutions unbounded in \(L^\infty(S^n)\). More precisely, if \(k \geq 2\) and \(n \geq 4k+3\), then \(\|g_\varepsilon - g_0 \|_{C^k(S^n)} \to 0\) as \(\varepsilon \to 0\) and for \(\varepsilon\) sufficiently small problem (1) on \((S^n, g_\varepsilon)\) has a sequence of solutions \(v^i_{\varepsilon}\) with \(\|v^i_{\varepsilon}\|_{L^\infty(S^n)} \to \infty\) as \(i \to \infty\).