Global bifurcations of nodal solutions for coupled elliptic equations

Abstract

We investigate the global bifurcation structure of the radial nodal solutions to the coupled elliptic equations \begin{equation} \left\{ \begin{array}{lr} -{\Delta}u+u=u^3+\beta uv^2\mbox{ in }B_1 ,\nonumber -{\Delta}v+v=v^3+\beta u^2v\mbox{ in }B_1 ,\nonumber u,v\in H_{0,r}^1(B_1).\nonumber \end{array} \right. \end{equation} Here $B_1$ is a unit ball in $\mathbb{R}^3$ and $\beta\in\mathbb{R}$ the coupling constant is used as bifurcation parameter. For each $k$, the unique pair of nodal solutions $\pm w_k$ with exactly $k-1$ zeroes to the scalar field equation $-\Delta w + w=w^3$ generate exactly four synchronized solution curves and exactly four semi-trivial solution curves to the above system. We obtain a fairly complete global bifurcation structure of all bifurcating branches emanating from these eight solution curves of the system, and show that for different $k$ these bifurcation structures are disjoint. We obtain exact and distinct nodal information for each of the bifurcating branches, thus providing a fairly complete characterization of nodal solutions of the system in terms of the coupling.