Liouville-type results in exterior domains for radial solutions of fully nonlinear equations (Q2184708)

The authors consider the following fully nonlinear uniformly elliptic boundary value problem in the exterior of a ball \(B \subset \mathbb{R}^N\) \[ \begin{cases} -\mathcal{F}(D^2u)=u^p, \ \ \ &\text{in} \ \ \mathbb{R}^N\setminus \bar{B},\\ u=0, &\text{on} \ \ \partial B. \end{cases} \] Here, \(p\in (1,+\infty)\) and \(\mathcal{F}\) denotes one of the Pucci's extremal operators \(\mathcal{M}^-_{\lambda,\Lambda},\mathcal{M}^+_{\lambda,\Lambda}\), with \(0<\lambda\leq \Lambda\), defined by \[ \begin{aligned} \mathcal{M}^-_{\lambda,\Lambda}(X)&:= \lambda \sum_{\mu_i\geq 0}\mu_i+\Lambda \sum_{\mu_i< 0}\mu_i, \\ \mathcal{M}^+_{\lambda,\Lambda}(X)&:=\Lambda \sum_{\mu_i\geq0}\mu_i+\lambda \sum_{\mu_i<0}\mu_i \end{aligned} \] for any squared symmetric matrix \(X\), where \(\mu_i\) are the eigenvalues of \(X\). The main result of this paper states necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of positive radial solutions of the above problem. More precisely, the authors show that there are critical exponents \(p_+^*\) and \(p_-^*\) such that a radial solution exists if and only if \(p>p_+^*\) (resp. \(p>p_-^*\)) when \(\mathcal{F}=\mathcal{M}^+_{\lambda,\Lambda}\) (resp. \(\mathcal{F}=\mathcal{M}^-_{\lambda,\Lambda}\)). In particular, for \(p>p_\pm^*\), the authors prove that there exist a unique positive radial solution \(u^*\) and infinitely many positive radial solutions \(u\) having, respectively, the following asymptotic behaviour \[ \lim_{r\rightarrow +\infty}r^{\tilde{N}_{\pm}-2}u^*(r)=C>0, \ \ \ \ \lim_{r\rightarrow +\infty}r^{\tilde{N}_{\pm}-2}u(r)=+\infty, \] where \[ \tilde{N}_-=\frac{\lambda}{\Lambda}(N-1)+1, \ \ \ \text{and} \ \ \ \tilde{N}_+=\frac{\Lambda}{\lambda}(N-1)+1. \] The proof relies on a careful study of the initial value problem for the ODE associated to radial solutions of the problem.