Variational properties of a nonlinear elliptic equation and rigidity

Variational methods applied to PDEs (35A15) Oscillation, zeros of solutions, mean value theorems, etc. in context of PDEs (35B05) Nonlinear elliptic equations (35J60) Global differential geometry (53C99)

Abstract: We consider in this paper elliptic equations which are perturbations of Laplace's equation by a compactly supported potential. We show that in dimension greater than three for a wide class of potentials all the solutions are globally minimising. However, in dimension two the situation is different. We show that for radially symmetric potentials there always exist solutions which are not locally minimal unless the potential vanishes identically. We discuss the relations of this with the so-called Hopf rigidity phenomenon.

Review text

The question discussed is the following: Under which conditions on the potential \(V\) are all classical solutions of the nonlinear equation \[ \Delta u= -V_u'(u, x_1,\dots, x_n) \] global minimizers for the functional \[ I(u)= \int{1\over 2}|\nabla u|^2- V(u, x_1,\dots, x_n) dx_1\cdots dx_n. \] A global minimizer is a smooth function on a domain of \(\mathbb{R}^n\) minimizing the integral \(I(u)\) over all bounded subdomains with smooth boundaries with respect to smooth functions with the same boundary values. One result gives sufficient conditions in order that any solution of the above equations is globally minimizing. Another result of the paper is that if \(n=2\) and \(V\) is radially symmetric and compactly supported, then there always exist radial nonminimal solutions of the above equation, unless \(V\) vanishes identically.

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