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

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.