Symmetry results for critical anisotropic \(p\)-Laplacian equations in convex cones (Q2201985)

The authors consider a norm \(H\) of \(\mathbb{R}^{n}\), \(n\geq 2\), such that \(H^{2}\) is of class \(C^{2}(\mathbb{R}^{n}\setminus \{\mathcal{O}\})\), uniformly convex and \(C^{1,1}\) in \(\mathbb{R}^{n}\), a convex and open cone \(\Sigma \) in \(\mathbb{R}^{n}\), written as \(\Sigma =\mathbb{R}^{k}\times \mathcal{C}\), \(k\in \{0,\ldots ,n\}\) and \(\mathcal{C}\subset \mathbb{R}^{n-k}\) being a convex cone which does not contain a line, and the anisotropic critical \(p\)-Laplace equation in \(\mathbb{R}^{n}\): \(\mathrm{div}(a(\nabla u))+u^{p^{\ast }-1}=0\), \(u>0\), in \(\Sigma \), with \(a(\xi )=H^{p-1}(\xi)\nabla H(\xi )\), \(1 < p < n\) and \(p^{\ast }=\frac{np}{n-p}\). The boundary condition \(a(\nabla u)\cdot \nu =0\) is imposed on \(\partial \Sigma \) and the solution is supposed to belong to \(\mathcal{D}^{1,p}(\Sigma )=\{u\in L^{p^{\ast }}(\Sigma ):\nabla u\in L^{p}(\Sigma )\}\). The main result of the paper proves that \[u(x)=U_{\lambda ,x_{0}}^{H}(x)=\left( \frac{ \lambda ^{\frac{1}{p-1}}\left(n^{\frac{1}{p}}\left( \frac{n-p}{p-1}\right) ^{\frac{p-1}{p}}\right) }{ \lambda ^{\frac{p}{p-1}}+H_0( x_{0}-x)^{\frac{p}{p-1}} } \right)^{\frac{n-p}{p}} \] for some \(\lambda >0\), \(x_{0}\in \Sigma \) and where \(H_{0}\) denotes the dual norm associated to \(H\). Moreover, if \(k=n\), then \(\Sigma =\mathbb{R}^{n}\) and \(x_{0}\) may be a generic point in \(\mathbb{R}^{n}\), if \(k\in \{1,\ldots ,n-1\}\), then \(x_{0}\in \mathbb{R}^{k}\setminus \{\mathcal{O}\}\) and if \(k=0\), then \(x_{0}=\mathcal{O}\). When \(\Sigma =\mathbb{R}^{n}\) and \(H\) is the Euclidean norm, this result has already been proved by different authors. The authors first prove that \(u\) is bounded and that it satisfies certain decay estimates at infinity. Using a Caccioppoli-type inequality, they prove some asymptotic estimates on certain integrals involving higher order derivatives of \(u\). They then introduce the function \(v=u^{\frac{-p}{n-p}}\) and they derive an elliptic equation satisfied by \(v\). They finally prove that \(v\) and \(\nabla v\) satisfy explicit growth conditions at infinity, from which they prove that \(\nabla a(\nabla v)\) is a multiple of the identity matrix, whence the symmetry result.