A bifurcation phenomenon in a singularly perturbed one-phase free boundary problem of phase transition (Q5963581)

In this paper, the authors prove that a bifurcation phenomenon exists in a one-phase singularly perturbed free boundary problem of phase transition, i.e., the uniqueness of a solution breaks down as the boundary data decreases through a threshold, when the minimizer of the considered functional separates from the trivial harmonic solution. The authors show the existence of a third solution, a critical point of the functional being minimized, by using the mountain pass lemma. To describe the problem at hand more precisely, let \(\Gamma\in C^{\infty}(\mathbb{R})\) be a nondecreasing function such that \(\Gamma(s)\equiv 0\) for \(s\leq 0\), \(\Gamma(s)\equiv 1\) for \(s\geq 1\), and \(0\leq \Gamma(s)\leq 1\) for \(0<s<1\). Define \(\Gamma_{\varepsilon}(s):=\Gamma(s/\varepsilon)\). The singularly perturbed variational problem considered in this paper consists of minimizing the functional \[ J_{\varepsilon}(u):=\int_{\Omega}\left(\frac{1}{2}|\nabla u|^2+Q(x)\Gamma_{\varepsilon}(u)\right)dx, \] where \(\Omega\) is a smooth bounded domain in \(\mathbb{R}^n\), \(Q\in W^{2,2}(\Omega)\) is a continuous positive function with \(\inf_{\Omega} Q>0\), and \(u\in H^1(\Omega)\) is subject to the boundary condition \(u(x)=\sigma(x)\) on \(\partial \Omega\), where \(\sigma \in C(\partial\Omega)\) and \(\min_{\partial\Omega}\sigma>0\). The corresponding Euler-Lagrange equation leads to the boundary value problem \[ -\Delta u +Q(x)\Gamma_{\varepsilon}'(u) = 0 \text{ in } \Omega, \quad u=\sigma \text{ on } \partial\Omega. \] The main focus of this paper is the question of uniqueness of weak solutions to the above boundary value problem. The first main result of the paper is a non-uniqueness theorem, proving the existence of a critical point solution, likely a saddle point solution, when bifurcation occurs as the boundary data decreases through a threshold. The second main result of this paper describes the convergence of a solution of the corresponding parabolic problem to one of the elliptic one.