On a free boundary problem of plasma equilibria - asymptotic behavior and symmetric property of a solution - (Q1068294)

The author considers the following nonlinear model of a confused plasma in tokomak machine: \[ (E)\quad -\Delta u=\lambda g(x,u)\text{ in } \Omega_ p=\{x\in \Omega:\quad u(x)>0\}:\quad -\Delta u=0\text{ in } \Omega \setminus \Omega_ p, \] \[ u|_{\partial \Omega}=\text{ unknown constant;} -\int_{\partial \Omega}(\partial u/\partial \nu)ds= \text{ given positive constant,} \] where \(\Omega\) is a bounded domain in \({\mathbb{R}}^ n\) and \(\lambda\) is a given positive parameter. The following free boundary problem is considered: to find u and \(\Omega_ p\subset \Omega\) satisfying (E), where \(\partial \Omega_ p\) is the free boundary. This problem was studied by many authors (see the references cited in the paper). The present author studies the asymptotic behaviour of the solution as \(\lambda\to \infty\) and proves that, under some assumptions on g, \(d(\Omega_ p)\to 0\) (where \(d(\Omega_ p)\) is the maximum of the measure of the cross section of \(\partial \Omega_ p\) by an (n-1)-dimensional hyperplane). Moreover, under the assumption that \(\Omega\) and g(x,s) are symmetric, the existence and uniqueness of a symmetric solution is shown.