Uniqueness results for semilinear polyharmonic boundary value problems on conformally contractible domains. I. (Q1414172)

The review concerns also the second part of this paper, see below. The main goal of the two papers is to study uniqueness of nonlinear polyharmonic variational problems with supercritical growth in suitable domains. In the first part, a general uniqueness principle generalizing the classical Noether theorem is investigated. Basic is the notion of conformally contractible domains \(\Omega\subset\mathbb R^n\) which means that there exists a conformal vector field \(\xi: \overline\Omega\to \mathbb R^n\) such that \(\forall x\in \partial\Omega: \langle\nu(x), \xi(x)\rangle\leq 0\) and strictly negative on a large enough part of \(\partial\Omega\). Here \(\nu\) is the exterior normal at a \(\partial\Omega\), and a vector field is called conformal, if \(\partial_j \xi^i+ \partial_i\xi^j= {2\over n}(\text{div\,}\xi) \delta_{ij}\).. Basing upon conformal vector fields, transformation groups generated by these are introduced. Uniqueness holds if one can show that deformations along this group yield strictly negative derivatives of the underlying energy functional except in one point. Applications are given in the second part. All (strictly) star shaped domains are conformally contractible (take \(\xi= -id\)), but further by far less obvious examples are given. A model equation is e.g. \[ (-\Delta)^m u=\lambda u+| u|^{p-1} u,\text{ in }\Omega,\;u= \nabla u=\cdots= \nabla^{m-1} u= 0\text{ on }\partial\Omega, \] where the following is shown: Let \(n> 2m\), \(p\) supercritical, i.e. \(p> (n+ 2m)/(n-2m)\) and \(\Omega\) such that the associated conformal vector field \(\xi\) satisfies \(\text{div\,}\xi\leq 0\). Then there is a positive \(\overline\lambda> 0\) such that for \(\lambda>\overline\lambda\) one only has the trivial solution \(u\equiv 0\). Related reults are shown also for the nonlinearities \(\lambda(1+| u|^{p-1} u)\) and \(\lambda\exp(u)\).