Global bifurcation results for a semilinear elliptic equation on all of \(\mathbb{R}^ N\) (Q1816469)

The existence of positive solutions of the equation \[ -\Delta u(x)=\lambda g(x)f(u(x)),\;x\in\mathbb{R}^N,\quad 0<u<1,\;x\in\mathbb{R}^N,\;\lim_{|x|\to\infty} u(x)=0,\leqno{(1)_\lambda} \] is studied by using methods of bifurcation theory. The equation (1)\(_\lambda\) arises in population genetics. The unknown function \(u\) corresponds to the relative frequency of an allele and the real parameter \(\lambda>0\) corresponds to the reciprocal of a diffusion coefficient. There are assumed the following hypotheses: (i) \(N=3,4,5\), (ii) \(g\) is a smooth bounded function such that \(g\in L^{N/2}(\mathbb{R}^N)\) and \(g(x_0)>0\), for some \(x_0\in\mathbb{R}^N\), (iii) \(f:[0,1]\to\mathbb{R}^+\) is a smooth function such that \(f(0)=f(1)\), \(f'(0)>0\), \(f'(1)<0\), and \(f(u)>0\) for \(0<u<1\).