Conformal metrics on the four-dimensional half sphere with symmetric $Q$ and $T$ curvatures

Abstract

In this paper, we address the problem of prescribing non-constant $Q$ and boundary $T$ curvatures on the upper hemisphere $\mathbb{S}^4_+\subset \mathbb{R}^5$, via a conformal change of the background metric. This is equivalent to solve a fourth-order non-linear elliptic boundary value problem with a third-order non-linear equation and homogeneous Neumann conditions at the boundary. The problem admits a Mean-field type variational formulation, similar to the one obtained by Cruz-Bl\'azquez and Ruiz for a related problem in two dimensions, with the associated energy functional being bounded from below but, in general, not coercive. By imposing symmetry conditions, we are able to prove the existence of minimizers, especially when $Q,T\geq 0$. To the best of our knowledge, these are the first existence results obtained for this setting.