Supercritical elliptic problems on the round sphere and nodal solutions to the Yamabe problem in projective spaces

Abstract

Given an isoparametric function $f$ on the $n$-dimensional round sphere, we consider functions of the form $u=w\circ f$ to reduce the semilinear elliptic problem \[ -Δ_{g_0}u+λu=λ | u\ | ^{p-1}u\qquad\text{ on }\mathbb{S}^n \] with $\lambda >0$ and $1<p$, into a singular ODE in $[0,\pi ]$ of the form $w^{\prime \prime }+\frac{h(r)}{\sin r}{w}^{\prime }+\frac{\lambda }{{\ell }^2}(|w{|}^{p-1}w-w)=0$, where $h$ is an strictly decreasing function having exactly one zero in this interval and $\ell$ is a geometric constant. Using a double shooting method, together with a result for oscillating solutions to this kind of ODE, we obtain a sequence of sign-changing solutions to the first problem which are constant on the isoparametric hypersurfaces associated to $f$ and blowing-up at one or two of the focal submanifolds generating the isoparametric family. Our methods apply also when $p>\frac{n+2}{n-2}$, i.e., in the supercritical case. Moreover, using a reduction via harmonic morphisms, we prove existence and multiplicity of sign-changing solutions to the Yamabe problem on the complex and quaternionic space, having a finite disjoint union of isoparametric hipersurfaces as regular level sets.