Radial entire solutions to even order semilinear elliptic equations in the plane

Abstract

SynopsisSemilinear elliptic equations of the formare considered, where Δm is the m-th iterate of the two-dimensional Laplacian Δ, p(t) is continuous in [0, ∞), and f(u is continuous and positive either in (0, ∞) or in ℝ.Our main objective is to present conditions on p and f which imply the existence of radial entire solutions to (*), that is, those functions of class C2m(ℝ2) which depend only on |x| and satisfy (*) pointwise in ℝ2.First, necessary and sufficient conditions are established for equation (*), with p(t) > 0 in [0, ∞), to possess infinitely many positive radial entire solutions which are asymptotic to positive constant multiples of |x|2m−2 log |x as |x| → ∞. Secondly, it is shown that, in the case p(t < 0, in [ 0, ∞) and f(u) > 0 is nondecreasing in ℝ, equation (*) always has eventually negative radial entire solutions, all of which decrease at least as fast as negative constant multiples of |x|2m−2 log |x| as |x| → ∞. Our results seem to be new even when specialised to the prototypeswhere γ is a constant.