Sharp Sobolev inequality involving a critical nonlinearity on a boundary (Q2386874)

This paper is devoted to the study of several qualitative properties related to the Neumann problem \(-\Delta u+\lambda u=0\) in \(\Omega\), \(\partial u/\partial\nu =Q(x)| u| ^{q-2}u\) on \(\partial\Omega\), where \(\Omega\subset\mathbb R^N\) (\(N\geq 3\)) is a smooth bounded domain, \(\lambda \) is a real parameter and \(q=2(N-1)/(N-2)\). The main results of the present paper are the following: (i) a criterion for the existence of least energy solutions; (ii) the asymptotic analysis of least energy solutions as \(\lambda\rightarrow\infty\); (iii) energy estimates of instantons centered either on a flat part of the boundary or at a boundary point with negative curvature; (v) a sharp Sobolev inequality. The proofs of the main results rely on min-max arguments based on the topological linking.