Symmetry properties of positive solutions for fully nonlinear elliptic systems

Abstract

We investigate symmetry properties of positive solutions for fully nonlinear uniformly elliptic systems, such as $$ F_i \,(x,Du_i,D^2u_i) +f_i \,(x,u_1, \ldots , u_n,Du_i)=0, \;\; 1 \leq i \leq n, $$ in a bounded domain $\Omega$ in $\mathbb{R}^N$ with Dirichlet boundary condition $u_1=\ldots,u_n=0$ on $\partial\Omega$. Here, $f_i $'s are nonincreasing with the radius $r=|x|$, and satisfy a cooperativity assumption. In addition, each $f_i $ is the sum of a locally Lipschitz with a nondecreasing function in the variable $u_i$, and may have superlinear gradient growth. We show that symmetry occurs for systems with nondifferentiable $f_i$'s by developing a unified treatment of the classical moving planes method in the spirit of Gidas-Ni-Nirenberg. We also present different applications of our results, including uniqueness of positive solutions for Lane-Emden systems in the subcritical case in a ball, and symmetry for a class of systems with natural growth in the gradient.