Uniqueness and multiple existence of positive radial solutions of the Brezis-Nirenberg Problem on annular domains in ${\Bbb S}^{3}$

TL;DR

This paper investigates the existence and uniqueness of positive radial solutions to the Brezis-Nirenberg problem on spherical annular domains, revealing how solutions vary with parameters and domain geometry.

Contribution

It establishes conditions for multiple and unique positive radial solutions on spherical annuli, extending understanding of nonlinear PDEs on curved domains.

Findings

Number of solutions varies with parameters and domain size.

Existence of multiple solutions for small annuli.

Uniqueness results depend on the parameter range.

Abstract

The uniqueness and multiple existence of positive radial solutions to the Brezis-Nirenberg problem on a domain in the 3-dimensional unit sphere ${\mathbb S}^3$ \begin{equation*} \left\{ \begin{aligned} \Delta_{{\mathbb S}^3}U -\lambda U + U^p&=0,\, U>0 && \text{in $\Omega_{\theta_1,\theta_2}$,}\\ U &= 0&&\text{on $\partial \Omega_{\theta_1,\theta_2}$,} \end{aligned} \right. \end{equation*} for $-\lambda_{1}<\lambda\leq 1$ are shown, where $\Delta_{{\mathbb S}^3}$ is the Laplace-Beltrami operator, $\lambda_{1}$ is the first eigenvalue of $-\Delta_{{\mathbb S}^3}$ and $\Omega_{\theta_1,\theta_2}$ is an annular domain in ${\mathbb S}^3$: whose great circle distance (geodesic distance) from $(0,0,0,1)$ is greater than $\theta_1$ and less than $\theta_2$. A solution is said to be radial if it depends only on this geodesic distance. It is proved that the number of positive radial solutions of the problem changes with respect to the exponent $p$ and parameter $\lambda$ when $\theta_1=\varepsilon$, $\theta_2=\pi-\varepsilon$ and $0<\varepsilon$ is sufficiently small.