Saddle-shaped solutions of bistable diffusion equations in all of \(\mathbb R^{2m}\) (Q843186)

The main goal of the authors is to consider existence and instability results of saddle-shaped solutions of the semilinear elliptic equation \[ - \Delta u= f (u) \] in the whole \(\mathbb R^{2 m}\), being \(f\) of bistable type. It is known that in dimension \(2m=2\) there exists a saddle shaped solution. This is a solution which changes sign in \(\mathbb R^2\) and vanishes only on \(\{ |x_1| = |x_2| \}\). It is also known that this solution is unstable. The authors prove the existence of saddle-shaped solutions in every even dimension, as well as their instability in the case of dimension \(2m=4\). We point out that it is established that if \(2m=4\), every solution vanishing in the ``Simon cone'' is unstable outside every compact set and, as a consequence, has infinite Morse index. Interesting is the relation between these results and De Giorgi's conjecture extensively studied by many authors and for which the existence of a counter-example in high dimensions is still an open question.