Existence and bifurcation of the positive solutions for a semilinear equation with critical exponent (Q1924454)

The following semilinear elliptic problem is considered: \[ -\Delta u+u= u^{p-1}+\mu f(x),\quad x\in\mathbb{R}^N,\quad N>2,\quad u\in H^1(\mathbb{R}^N),\quad u>0,\tag{1} \] where \(\mu\geq 0\), \(p>2\) are some given constants and \(f(x)\) is some given function in \(H^{-1}(\mathbb{R}^N)\) such that \(f(x)\geq 0\), \(f(x)\not\equiv 0\) in \(\mathbb{R}^N\). For \(p=2N/(N-2)\), by using variational methods based on the minimal solutions, the authors show that there exists a positive constant \(\mu^*>0\) such that (1) has at least two solutions if \(\mu\in(0,\mu^*)\) and \(2<N<6\) and no solutions if \(\mu>\mu^*\). Furthermore, (1) possesses a unique solution when \(\mu=\mu^*\). For \(N\geq 6\), by using the bifurcation theory and some monotonicity conditions on \(f\) it is shown that there exist two constants \(0<\mu_{**}\leq\mu^{**}<\mu^*\) such that problem (1) has a unique solution (the minimal solution) if \(\mu\in(0,\mu_{**})\) and at least two solutions if \(\mu\in(\mu^{**},\mu^*)\).