Solutions to overdetermined elliptic problems in nontrivial exterior domains (Q2302426)

The very interesting paper under review deals with existence of solutions of a semilinear overdetermined elliptic problem of the form \[ \begin{cases} \Delta u+u-u^p=0 & \text{in}\ \Omega,\\ u>0 & \text{in}\ \Omega,\\ u=0 & \text{on}\ \partial\Omega,\\ \frac{\partial u}{\partial \nu}=c\neq 0 & \text{on}\ \partial\Omega. \end{cases} \] Here \(\Omega\subset\mathbb{R}^N,\) \(N\geq2,\) is a smooth domain, \(p\in\left(1,\frac{N+2}{N-2}\right)\) and \(\nu\) stands for the outward normal to \(\partial\Omega.\) The problem considered is overdetermined due to the presence of two boundary conditions. The famous Berestycki-Caffarelli-Nirenberg conjecture [\textit{H. Berestycki} et al., Commun. Pure Appl. Math. 50, No. 11, 1089--1111 (1997; Zbl 0906.35035)] asserts that if \(\mathbb{R}^N\setminus \overline{\Omega}\) is connected, then the existence of a bounded solution to the above problem implies that \(\Omega\) is either a ball, a half-space, a generalized cylinder \(B^k\times \mathbb{R}^{N-k}\) with a ball \(B^k\subset\mathbb{R}^k,\) or the complement of one of them. That conjecture has been disproved for \(N\geq 3\) by the third author in [Calc. Var. Partial Differ. Equ. 37, No. 3--4, 329--344 (2010; Zbl 1188.35122)]. In this paper, the authors construct nontrivial exterior domains \(\Omega\subset\mathbb{R}^N\) for all \(N\geq 2,\) such that the overdetermined problem admits a positive bounded solution, disproving this way the Berestycki-Caffarelli-Nirenberg conjecture also in the case \(N=2.\)