Positive solutions of semilinear elliptic equations: a dynamical approach (Q2444516)

The article concerns the structure of positive radial solutions for semilinear equations of the form \[ \Delta u + f(| x| , u) = 0 \;, \;x \in \mathbb {R}^n \, (n > 2), \;u(| x| ) \to 0 \;\text{ as } \;| x| \to \infty . \] The particular feature of the superlinear nonlinearity \(f\) is that it changes from subcritical to supercritical growth. More precisely, it is assumed that \(f(| x| ,u)\) is subcritical for \(u\) small and \(| x| \) large, and supercritical for \(u\) large and \(| x| \) small. The author proves existence and non-existence results for regular and singular ground state solutions with either fast or slow decay, revealing a surprisingly rich solution structure for such equations (see [\textit{S. Alarcón} and \textit{A. Quaas}, J. Differ. Equations 248, No. 4, 866--892 (2010; Zbl 1187.35077)]). The proofs rely on a ``dynamic approach'': by a change of variable (the Fowler transformation) the equation is transformed into a two-dimensional dynamical system that can be studied by dynamical tools such as invariant manifold theory and phase diagrams.