GJMS-type operators on a compact Riemannian manifold: best constants and Coron-type solutions (Q738716)

The paper deals with existence questions of solutions to a nonlinear elliptic problem involving critical Sobolev exponent for a polyharmonic operator over a Riemannian manifold \(M.\) The author shows, first of all, that the best constant of the Sobolev embedding on a manifold can be chosen as close as one wants to the Euclidean one, and as a consequence proves existence of minimizers when the energy functional goes below the quantified threshold. Next, higher energy solutions are obtained by the J. M. Coron topological method, provided that the minimizing solution does not exist. To perform this topological argument, the difficulty of dealing with polyharmonic operators on Riemannian manifolds are overcomed by suitable adaptation of the Lions concentration-compactness lemma.