Existence and nonexistence theorem for entire subsolutions of \(k\)-Yamabe type equations (Q444929)

For any integer \(k\) with \(1\leq k\leq n\), let \(\sigma_k(k)=\sum_{1\leq i_1<\dots <i_k\leq n}\lambda_{i_1}\cdots\lambda_{i_n}\) denote the \(k\)-th elementary symmetric function of \(n\) variations \(\lambda_1,\ldots ,\lambda_n\), and let \(\Gamma_k\) denote the connected component of \(\{\lambda\in {\mathbb R}^n;\;\sigma_k(k)>0\}\) containing the positive cone \(\Gamma_n=\{\lambda\in {\mathbb R}^n;\;\lambda_i>0,\;i=1,\dots ,n\}\). This paper deals with the fully nonlinear elliptic equation \[ \sigma_k^{1/k}(\lambda (-A^u))=u^{-(n+2)/(n-2)}f(u),\quad \lambda (-A^u)\in\Gamma_k\;\text{in} \,\mathbb R^n, \] where \(n\geq 3\) and \(f\) is a continuous function. The main result in this paper establishes the existence and nonexistence for positive entire subsolutions with a generalized Keller-Osserman condition. The proofs strongly rely on monotonicity arguments.