Threshold phenomena for least energy solutions of a doubly critical Neumann problem with a critical absorption term
We investigate the existence and nonexistence of least energy solutions for a doubly critical Neumann problem with a critical absorption term. We consider a positive function $u$ defined on a smooth bounded domain $Ω\subset\mathbb{R}^n$ with $n\ge 5$, satisfying $-Δu + λu = u^{2^* - 1} -αu^{2^\sharp-1}$ inside $Ω$, with Neumann boundary condition $\nabla u\cdot ν= u^{2^\sharp -1}$ on $\partialΩ$, where $λ>0$, $α\ge0$, $2^*=\frac{2n}{n-2}$ is the critical Sobolev exponent and $2^\sharp=\frac{2(n-1)}{n-2}$ denotes the critical trace exponent. The simultaneous presence of the interior and boundary critical exponents together with this critical absorption term creates a new interaction between competing concentration mechanisms. In particular, the absorption term has the same critical trace exponent as the boundary nonlinearity, but with the opposite sign and acting in the interior of $Ω$. Consequently, it competes with the boundary mean curvature correction at the same asymptotic order in the energy expansion, leading to a sharp threshold phenomenon. Combining several analytic techniques and geometric tools, we prove the existence of a threshold value $α_{0}=α_{0}(λ,Ω)\in(0,+\infty)$ such that the problem admits a least energy solution if $α<α_{0}$, and no least energy solution if $α>α_{0}$. Moreover, the problem also has a least energy solution at $α=α_0$ provided $α_0> C(n)\max_{\partial Ω} H$, where $C(n)$ is a positive constant depending only on $n$ and $H$ is the mean curvature on $\partialΩ$.