Nonlinear elliptic fourth order equations existence and multiplicity results (Q649063)

The authors consider a semilinear equation associated to a fourth order elliptic operator (of Paneitz-Branson type) on a compact Riemannian manifold of dimension \(n\), with nonlinearity of the form \[ f (x)|u|^{N-2} u + \lambda |u|^{q-2} u , \] with \( 1 < q < 2 \), \( N = \frac{2n}{n-4} \) the critical exponent, \( \lambda > 0 \) and \(f\) a positive smooth function. In dimension \( n \geq 6\), they prove the existence of a non trivial \( C^{4,\theta} \) solution if \( \lambda \) is small enough and under a technical assumption relating the scalar curvature and the coefficients of the operator at a maximum of \(f\). If in addition the coefficients are constant (i.e., the operator is a linear combination of powers of the Laplacian), they obtain the existence of three distinct solutions, a positive one, a negative one and a third one distinct from these two.