Symmetry properties of stable solutions of semilinear elliptic equations in unbounded domains

Abstract

We consider stable solutions of a semilinear elliptic equation with homogeneous Neumann boundary conditions. A classical result of Casten, Holland and Matano states that all stable solutions are constant in convex bounded domains. In this paper, we examine whether this result extends to unbounded convex domains. We give a positive answer for stable non-degenerate solutions, and for stable solutions if the domain \(\Omega \) further satisfies \(\Omega \cap \{\vert x\vert \le R\}= O(R^2)\), when \(R\rightarrow +\infty \). If the domain is a straight cylinder, an additional natural assumption is needed. These results can be seen as an extension to more general domains of some results on De Giorgi’s conjecture. As an application, we establish asymptotic symmetries for stable solutions when the domain satisfies a geometric property asymptotically.