Bifurcation in a multicomponent system of nonlinear Schrödinger equations (Q360529)

The author considers the following system \[ \begin{cases} \Delta u_j+a(x)u_j=\mu_ju_j^3+\beta\sum_{k\not=j}u_k^2u_j &\text{ in }\Omega\\ u_j=0, j=1, 2, \dots, n &\text{ on } \partial\Omega,\end{cases} \tag{P} \] where \(\Omega\subset\mathbb{R}^N(N\leq 3)\) is a possibly unbounded domain. \(\mu_1, \mu_2, \dots, \mu_n>0\) are fixed and \(\beta\in \mathbb{R}\) is a bifurcation parameter. For the case \(n=2\), there are many results on the existence of the ground state and bound state solutions for system \((P)\) by using the variational method. On the other hand, a different bifurcation method was used by the author, \textit{N. Dancer} and \textit{Zh.-Q. Wang} [Calc. Var. Partial Differ. Equ. 37, No. 3-4, 345--361 (2010; Zbl 1189.35074)] to deal with the problem \((P)\) but only for the case of \(n=2.\) The aim of this paper is to extend the bifurcation method from \(n=2\) to any \(n\geq 2\). This leads to new feature and difficulties. Because for \(n=2\), one has one dimensional kernel at the bifurcation parameter. For \(n\geq 2,\) one has to deal with high-dimensional kernels. To overcome this difficulty, the author discover a hidden symmetry of the problem which can be used to prove multiple global bifurcation branches.