Serrin's overdetermined problem and constant mean curvature surfaces (Q903927)

Let \(f\) be a smooth function satisfying: \[ f (0) = 0 = f (1),\, f (s) > 0, \, \forall s \in (0, 1); \, f' (1) < 0. \] The main theorem in this paper is the following: If \(N \geq 9\), then there exists an epigraph domain \(\Omega\) of the form \(\Omega = \{x \in \mathbb R^N | x_N > \phi (x_1 , x_2 ,\dots, x_{N -1} )\}\), where \(\phi : \mathbb R^{N -1} \to \mathbb R^1\) is a smooth function, which is not a half space, such that the problem \[ \begin{cases} \Delta u + f (u) = 0, \quad u > 0 \text{ in } \Omega,\quad u \in L^\infty (\Omega),\\ u = 0, \quad \frac{\partial u}{\partial \nu} = \text{const. on } \partial \Omega\end{cases}\tag{1} \] is solvable. This gives a negative answer to an open problem due to \textit{H. Berestycki} et al. [Commun. Pure Appl. Math. 50, No. 11, 1089--1111 (1997; Zbl 0906.35035)]. If the domain \(\Omega\) is bounded and if the same overdetermined problem (1) being solvable on \(\Omega\), \textit{J. Serrin} proved that \(\Omega\) must be a ball in [Arch. Ration. Mech. Anal. 43, 304--318 (1971; Zbl 0222.31007)]. In contrast, other results for lower dimension cases are studied. They provided two examples, to domains enclosed by a large dilation of an embedded constant mean curvature surface such that the overdetermined problem is solvable on them.