Symmetry breaking solutions of nonlinear elliptic systems

Abstract

We consider nonlinear elliptic systems with Dirichlet boundary condition on a bounded domain in $\mathbb R^{N}$ which is invariant with respect to the action of some group $G$ of orthogonal transformations. For every subgroup $K$ of $G$ we give a simple criterion for the existence of infinitely many solutions which are $K$-invariant but not $G$-invariant. We include a detailed discussion of the case $N=3$.