Group invariant solutions of certain partial differential equations

TL;DR

This paper develops a method to find group-invariant solutions to certain nonlinear PDEs on Riemannian manifolds, reducing unbounded domain problems to bounded ones, with applications to the p-Laplacian and minimal surface equations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach for analyzing G-invariant solutions of nonlinear PDEs on noncompact manifolds, simplifying the Dirichlet problem by domain reduction.

Findings

Reduction of unbounded domain problems to bounded domains for G-invariant solutions

Application to p-Laplacian and minimal surface equations

Establishment of a method for noncompact Lie group actions

Abstract

Let $M$ be a complete Riemannian manifold and $G$ a Lie subgroup of the isometry group of $M$ acting freely and properly on $M.$ We study the Dirichlet Problem \begin{align*} \operatorname{div}\left( \frac{a\left( \left\Vert \nabla u\right\Vert \right) }{\left\Vert \nabla u\right\Vert }\nabla u\right) & =0\text{ in }\Omega\\ u|\partial\Omega & =\varphi \end{align*} where $\Omega$ is a $G-$invariant domain of $C^{2,\alpha}$ class in $M$ and $\varphi\in C^{0}\left( \partial\overline{\Omega}\right) $ a $G-$invariant function. Two classical PDE's are included in this family: the $p-$Laplacian $(a(s)=s^{p-1},$ $p>1)$ and the minimal surface equation $(a(s)=s/\sqrt {1+s^{2}}).$ Our motivation is to present a method in studying $G$-invariant solutions for noncompact Lie groups which allows the reduction of the Dirichlet problem on unbounded domains to one on bounded domains.