Global bifurcation branches for radially symmetric Schrödinger equations (Q2504051)

The author investigates bifurcating branches from the trivial solution branch at \(\lambda=0\) for the nonlinear radially symmetric Schrödinger equation \(-\Delta u=w(|x|)|u|^\sigma u-\lambda^2u\), \(x\in\mathbb{R}^N\), \(\lim_{|x|\to\infty}u(x)=0\) under the following assumptions: 1) \(w\in C^1(\mathbb{R}^N)\) is radially symmetric, and \(0<\inf_{\mathbb{R}^N}\,w\leq \sup_{\mathbb{R}^N}\,w<\infty\), 2) there is \(R_0>0\) such that \(r\mapsto w(r)\) is nonincreasing on \([R_0,\infty)\), 3) \(0<\sigma<\frac{4}{N-2}\) for \(N\geq 3\) and \(\sigma>0\) for \(N=2\). It is shown that there exist infinitely many continua of nontrivial bound states \(u_\lambda\) bifurcating from the trivial solution at \(\lambda=0\), which reach arbitrarily large values of \(\lambda\) and are distinguished by the number of nodal domains of the relevant solutions \(u_\lambda\).