Existence and separation of positive radial solutions for semilinear elliptic equations (Q2249238)

The authors consider the semilinear elliptic equation \(\Delta u+K(|x|)u^p=0\) in \(\mathbb R^N\) for \(N > 2\) and \(p > 1\), and study separation phenomena of positive radial solutions. With respect to intersection and separation, they establish a classification of the solution structures, and investigate the structures of intersection, partial separation and separation. As a consequence, they obtain the existence of positive solutions with slow decay when the oscillation of the function \(r^{- \ell} K(r)\) with \(\ell > - 2\) around a positive constant is small near \(r = \infty\) and \(p\) is sufficiently large. Moreover, if the assumptions hold in the whole space, the equation has the structure of separation and possesses a singular solution as the upper limit of regular solutions. They also reveal that the equation changes its nature drastically across a critical exponent \(p_c\) which is determined by \(N\) and the order of the behavior of \(K(r)\) as \(r = | x | \to 0\) and \(\infty\). In order to understand how subtle the structure is on \(K\) at \(p = p_c\), they try to explain the criticality in a similar way as done by \textit{W. Ding} and \textit{W. Ni} [Duke Math. J. 52, 485--506 (1985; Zbl 0592.35048)] for the critical Sobolev exponent \(p = (N + 2) /(N - 2)\).