Symmetry of solutions to nonlocal nonlinear boundary value problems in radial sets

TL;DR

This paper proves symmetry properties of solutions to nonlocal nonlinear boundary value problems in radial sets, showing solutions are symmetric under certain conditions and establishing radial symmetry for solutions in the entire space.

Contribution

It introduces new symmetry results for solutions of nonlocal nonlinear problems, including axial and radial symmetry under mild assumptions, using maximum principles for antisymmetric supersolutions.

Findings

Solutions are axially symmetric if they satisfy a reflection inequality.

Nonnegative solutions in \\mathbb{R}^N are radially symmetric and decreasing.

Symmetry results apply to minimizers of associated energy functionals.

Abstract

For open radial sets $\Omega\subset \mathbb{R}^N$, $N\geq 2$ we consider the nonlinear problem \[ (P)\quad Iu=f(|x|,u) \quad\text{in $\Omega$,}\quad u\equiv 0\quad \text{on $\mathbb{R}^N\setminus \Omega$ and }\lim_{|x|\to\infty} u(x)=0, \] where $I$ is a nonlocal operator and $f$ is a nonlinearity. Under mild symmetry and monotonicity assumptions on $I$, $f$ and $\Omega$ we show that any continuous bounded solution of $(P)$ is axial symmetric once it satisfies a simple reflection inequality with respect to a hyperplane. In the special case where $f$ does not depend on $|x|$, we show that any nonnegative nontrivial continuous bounded solution of $(P)$ in $\mathbb{R}^N$ is radially symmetric (up to translation) and strictly decreasing in its radial direction. Our proves rely on different variants of maximum principles for antisymmetric supersolutions. As an application, we prove an axial symmetry result for minimizers of an energy functional associated to $(P)$.