THE STRUCTURE OF RADIAL SOLUTIONS FOR ELLIPTIC EQUATIONS ARISING FROM THE SPHERICAL ONSAGER VORTEX

Abstract

In this paper, we consider a nonlinear elliptic equation on the plane away from the origin, which arises from the spherical Onsager vortex theory in physics or the problem of prescribing Gaussian curvature in geometry. Depending on various situations for the prescribed function in the nonlinear term, the complete structure of radial solutions in terms of initial data will be offered.