An analytic construction of singular solutions related to a critical Yamabe problem

We answer affirmatively a question of Aviles posed in 1983, concerning the construction of singular solutions of semilinear equations without using phase-plane analysis. Fully exploiting the semilinearity and the stability of the linearized operator in any dimension, our techniques involve a careful gluing in weighted $L^\infty$ spaces that handles multiple occurrences of criticality, without the need of derivative estimates. The above solution constitutes an \emph{Ansatz} for the Yamabe problem with a prescribed singular set of maximal dimension $(n-2)/2$, for which, using the same machinery, we provide an alternative construction to the one given by Pacard. His linear theory uses $L^p$-theory on manifolds, while our approach studies the equations in the ambient space and is therefore suitable for generalization to nonlocal problems. In a forthcoming paper, we will prove analogous results in the fractional setting.