Nonradial solutions for the Hénon equation close to the threshold (Q2279832)

The authors prove a bifurcation result concerning the Hénon equation. More specifically they consider the following equation \[ \begin{cases} -\Delta u = |x|^{\alpha} u^{\frac{N+2+2\alpha}{N-2} - \varepsilon} & \mbox { in }B_{1}\\ u>0 & \mbox { in }B_{1}\\ u=0 & \mbox { on }\partial B_{1}\\ \end{cases} \] where \(B_{1}\) is the unit ball in \(\mathbb R^{N}, N\geq3, \varepsilon>0\) and \(\alpha\) is a real parameter. The main result of the paper states the existence of a branch of nonradial solutions that bifurcates from the radial one whenever the parameter \(\alpha\) is close to an even positive integer. The authors first prove existence, nondegeneracy and asymptotic behaviour of the unique radial solution. Then they study a rescaled problem which permits to deduce the desired bifurcation result by means of the change of the Morse index of the radial solution for \(\alpha\) close to an even integer.