Monotonicity formulas for coupled elliptic gradient systems with applications

Abstract

Abstract Consider the following coupled elliptic system of equations $$\begin{array}{} \displaystyle (-{\it\Delta})^s u_i = (u^2_1+\cdots+u^2_m)^{\frac{p-1}{2}} u_i \quad \text{in} ~~ \mathbb{R}^n , \end{array}$$ where 0 < s ≤ 2, p > 1, m ≥ 1, u = $\begin{array}{} \displaystyle (u_i)_{i=1}^m \end{array}$ and ui : ℝn → ℝ. The qualitative behavior of solutions of the above system has been studied from various perspectives in the literature including the free boundary problems and the classification of solutions. For the case of local scalar equation, that is when m = 1 and s = 1, Gidas and Spruck in [26] and later Caffarelli, Gidas and Spruck in [6] provided the classification of solutions for Sobolev sub-critical and critical exponents. More recently, for the case of local system of equations that is when m ≥ 1 and s = 1 a similar classification result is given by Druet, Hebey and Vétois in [17] and references therein. In this paper, we derive monotonicity formulae for entire solutions of the above local, when s = 1, 2, and nonlocal, when 0 < s < 1 and 1 < s < 2, system. These monotonicity formulae are of great interests due to the fact that a counterpart of the celebrated monotonicity formula of Alt-Caffarelli-Friedman [1] seems to be challenging to derive for system of equations. Then, we apply these formulae to give a classification of finite Morse index solutions. In the end, we provide an open problem in regards to monotonicity formulae for Lane-Emden systems.