Harmonic functions with nonlinear Neumann boundary condition and their Morse indices (Q2410665)

The paper under review deals with the study of the nonlinear Neumann problem for the Laplace equation \[ \begin{cases} \Delta u=0 & \mathrm{in }\;\Omega\, , \\ \frac{\partial u}{ \partial \nu}=f(x,u) & \mathrm{on }\;\partial \Omega\, , \end{cases} \] where \(\Omega\) is a bounded open smooth domain in \(\mathbb{R}^N\) (\(N \geq 2\)), \(\frac{\partial}{\partial \nu}\) denotes the normal derivative, and \(f: \partial \Omega \times \mathbb{R}\to \mathbb{R}\) is a continuous function having a continuous partial derivative with respect to the variable in \(\mathbb{R}\). In addition, \(f\) satisfies \[ \lim_{|t|\to+ \infty}f(x,t)t^{-1}|t|^{-(p-1)}=b \qquad \mathrm{uniformly\;for\;} x \in \partial \Omega\, , \] where \(b>0\) and \(p\) satisfies \[ 1<p<\frac{N}{N-2}\quad \text{if}\quad N\geq 3, \qquad \text{and}\qquad p \in (1,+\infty) \quad \text{if}\quad N= 2 . \] The authors investigate the relation between the boundedness of a solution to the problem above and its Morse index \(i(u)\). In particular, they show that if \((u_n)_{n \in \mathbb{N}}\) is a sequence of solutions, then \((u_n)_{n \in \mathbb{N}}\) is bounded in \(L^{\infty}(\Omega)\) if and only if the sequence of Morse indexes \((i(u_n))_{n \in \mathbb{N}}\) is bounded. Then the authors turn to consider the Liouville problem \[ \begin{cases} \Delta u=0 & \mathrm{in }\;\Pi\, , \\ \frac{\partial u}{ \partial \nu}=b|u|^{p-1}u & \mathrm{on }\;\partial \Pi\, , \end{cases} \] where \(\Pi\) is the half space \(\{x_N>0\}\) and prove that if \(u \in C^{1}(\overline{\Pi})\) is a bounded solution with \(i(u)<\infty\) then \(u\equiv 0\) in \(\overline{\Pi}\).