A limit equation and bifurcation diagrams of semilinear elliptic equations with general supercritical growth (Q1686091)

The author studies elliptic equations in \(\mathbb{R}^N\) of the form \[ \Delta u + f(u) = 0, \] where \(f\) satisfies some fairly general growth assumptions. Particularly, two sets of general conditions on \(f\) are considered, where each set of assumptions includes either the model example \[ f(u) = u^p \text{ or } f(u) = e^u. \] Hence, the author's results may be regarded as a generalization of well-known results for these model cases. The paper mainly studies radially symmetric classical and singular solutions to the equation. By a radial classical solution, the authors mean a classical solution \(u = u(r,\rho)\) to the initial value problem \[ -\left(u''(r) + \frac{N-1}{r}u'(r) \right) = f(u(r)),\;r > 0, \quad u'(0) = 0, \;u(0) = \rho, \] and by a singular solution \(u = u^{\ast}(r)\), they mean a local solution of the ODE \[ -\left(u''(r) + \frac{N-1}{r} u'(r) \right) = f(u(r)),\;r > 0, \] such that \(u^{\ast} \rightarrow \infty\) as \(r \rightarrow 0^+\). The main results of the paper examine the number of intersection points between a radial classical solution and a singular solution, or between a pair of radial classical solutions. Interestingly, the results show that the intersection number depends on the growth rate of \(f\) with respect to the Hölder conjugates of the Sobolev and Joesph-Lundgren critical exponents. Furthermore, two applications of the main results are explored. The first application is on determining if the Morse index of the singular solution to a Dirichlet problem in ball domains is finite, while the second application concerns bifurcation problems on the unit ball.