English

Nonsymmetric sign-changing solutions to overdetermined elliptic problems in bounded domains

Analysis of PDEs 2023-04-21 v2

Abstract

In 1971 J. Serrin proved that, given a smooth bounded domain ΩRN\Omega \subset \mathbb{R}^N and uu a positive solution of the problem: \begin{equation*} \begin{array}{ll} -\Delta u = f(u) &\mbox{in Ω\Omega, } u =0 &\mbox{on Ω\partial\Omega, } \partial_{\nu} u =\mbox{constant} &\mbox{on Ω\partial\Omega, } \end{array} \end{equation*} then Ω\Omega is necessarily a ball and uu is radially symmetric. In this paper we prove that the positivity of uu is necessary in that symmetry result. In fact we find a sign-changing solution to that problem for a C2C^2 function f(u)f(u) in a bounded domain Ω\Omega different from a ball. The proof uses a local bifurcation argument, based on the study of the associated linearized operator.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2211.14014,
  title  = {Nonsymmetric sign-changing solutions to overdetermined elliptic problems in bounded domains},
  author = {David Ruiz},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2211.14014},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

26 pages, 1 figure. In this new version I have corrected some minor mistakes, and I thank Antonio Jes\'us Fern\'andez for pointing me out. Comments are welcome

R2 v1 2026-06-28T07:12:30.991Z