Uniqueness and Symmetry for the Mean Field Equation on Arbitrary Flat Tori

Abstract

Abstract We study the following mean field equation on a flat torus $T:=\mathbb{C}/(\mathbb{Z}+\mathbb{Z}\tau )$: $$\begin{equation*} \varDelta u + \rho \left(\frac{e^{u}}{\int_{T}e^u}-\frac{1}{|T|}\right)=0, \end{equation*}$$where $ \tau \in \mathbb{C}, \mbox{Im}\ \tau>0$, and $|T|$ denotes the total area of the torus. We first prove that the solutions are evenly symmetric about any critical point of $u$ provided that $\rho \leq 8\pi $. Based on this crucial symmetry result, we are able to establish further the uniqueness of the solution if $\rho \leq \min{\{8\pi ,\lambda _1(T)|T|\}}$. Furthermore, we also classify all one-dimensional solutions by showing that the level sets must be closed geodesics.