Large number of bubble solutions for the equation \(\Delta u + K(y)u^{\frac{N + 2}{N - 2}\pm \varepsilon}=0\) on \(\mathbb{R}^N\) (Q295089)

The author studies positive solutions of the semilinear elliptic equation \[ \Delta u + K(|x|) u^{\frac{N+2}{N-2} \pm \varepsilon} =0 , \quad x \in \mathbb{R}^N, \] within the class of positive functions \(u \in D^{1,2} (\mathbb{R}^N)\), where the latter denotes the completion of \(C_0^\infty (\mathbb{R}^N)\) with respect to the norm \(\| \nabla u \|_{L^2 (\mathbb{R}^N)}\). It is assumed that \(N \geq 5\), \(\varepsilon>0\), and \(K\) is a positive function such that \(K(r) = K(r_0) - c |r-r_0|^m + O(|r-r_0|^{m+\theta})\) for \(|r-r_0| < \alpha\) holds with \(m \in [2,N-2)\) and positive constants \(r_0, c,\alpha, \theta\). The author shows that there is \(\varepsilon_0 >0\) such that for any \(\varepsilon \in (0, \varepsilon_0)\) there exists a solution to the above problem which has \(k(\varepsilon)\) bubbles. In addition, it is proved that \(k(\varepsilon) \to \infty\) as \(\varepsilon \searrow 0\) with an algebraic rate. The proof relies in particular on a Lyapunov-Schmidt reduction argument and appropriate asymptotic expansions of an energy functional.