Radial symmetry of positive solutions for semilinear elliptic equations in a disc (Q674576)

In the celebrated paper of \textit{B. Gidas}, \textit{W.-M. Ni} and \textit{L. Nirenberg} [Commun. Math. Phys. 68, 209-243 (1979; Zbl 0425.35020)] it is shown that every strictly positive solution of \[ -\Delta u= f(|x|,u)\quad\text{in }B,\quad u=0\quad\text{on }\partial B, \] is radially symmetric and strictly decreasing in \(r=|x|\in (0,1)\), provided \({\partial f\over\partial r} (r,u)\leq 0\). Here \(B\subset\mathbb{R}^n\) is the (unit) ball. In the present paper, by using the moving plane method and the Poincaré metric \(ds^2=(1-r^2)^{-2}|dx|^2\), a similar result is shown for the two-dimensional disk \(B\subset\mathbb{R}^2\), provided \({\partial/\partial r} ((1-r^2)/f(r,u))\leq 0\). Moreover, the same result holds for the singular problem \[ -\Delta u= f(|x|,u)\quad\text{in }B,\quad u=0\quad\text{on }\partial B,\quad \lim_{x\to 0} u(x)=\infty. \]