Rapidly decaying solutions of an ordinary differential equation with applications to semilinear elliptic and parabolic partial differential equations (Q1083598)

We consider the ordinary differential equation (1) \((\rho u')'/\rho +\lambda u+| u|^{\gamma -1}u=0\) \(x>0\), where \(\gamma\) and \(\lambda\) are real constants with \(\gamma >1\) and \(\rho\) (x) is a given weight function. The paper investigates the decay of solutions of (1) as \(x\to \infty\) under the following conditions for \(\rho\) (x): \(\rho (x)\in C^{\infty}(0,\infty)\), \(\rho (x)>0\), \(\rho\) '(x)\(\geq 0\), \(\rho\) (x)\(\to \infty\) as \(x\to \infty\) and (*) \(\rho '(x)/\rho (x)\to \infty\) as \(x\to \infty\). Kurtz studies (1) in the case of weight function \(\rho\) (x) without (*) and \(\lambda <0\). The solution of (1) is constructed under the condition: \(\int^{1}_{0}\rho (x)(\int^{1}_{x}\rho (t)^{- 1}dt)^{r/2}dx\) for some \(r>\gamma +1\). The main theorem (Theorem 1 in the introduction) states the existence of an infinite family of \(C^ 2(0,\infty)\) solutions u(x) with \(u(x)=O(\rho (x)^{-})\) as \(x\to 0\) and \(x\to \infty\). Moreover the author gives applications to the study of radially symmetric solutions of the semilinear elliptic equations such as \(\Delta u+\lambda u+| u|^{\gamma -1}u=0\) on \({\mathbb{R}}^ n\).