Conformal deformation of complete surface with negative curvature (Q1362871)

Let \((M,g)\) be a Riemannian surface. The paper considers the problem of deforming the metric \(g\) conformally to another, \(\widetilde g=e^{2u} g\), with prescribed scalar curvature \(K\). This problem is equivalent to solving the elliptic equation \[ \Delta u+K (x)e^{2u} = f(x), \quad x\in M, \tag{1} \] where \(f(x)\) is the Gaussian curvatrue of \(g\). Under certain assumptions on \(f\) and \(K\), making use of the standard iteration technique, the author proves the existence of solutions of (1). Then, by using the generalized maximum principle, he proves the uniqueness of the solution. These two statements give the main result of this paper: Let \((M,g)\) be a complete noncompact Riemannian surface with Gaussian curvature \(f(x) <0\), \(x_0\) be a fixed point in \(M\), and \(a,b,c\) some positive constants. Then for any negative locally Hölder continuous function \(K(x)\) satisfying \[ -c \bigl(1+ \text{dist}^2 (x,x_0) \bigr)\leq f(x) \leq b^2K(x) \leq -a^2, \] there exists a unique conformal complete metric \(\widetilde g\) with Gaussian curvature \(K(x)\).