A symmetry property for elliptic equations on the sphere

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to study how the symmetry of the spherical domain influences solutions of elliptic equations on such domain. The method pursued is a variant of the moving plane method, discovered by Alexandrov (1962) and used for differential equations by Gidas, Ni and Nirenberg (1979). We obtain a reflectional symmetry result with respect to maxima and minima of solutions.

10 pages, 2 figures