Classification of bifurcation diagrams for semilinear elliptic equations in the critical dimension

Abstract: We are interested in the global bifurcation diagram of radial solutions for the Gelfand problem with the exponential nonlinearity and a radially symmetric weight $0<a(|x|)\in C^2(\overline{B_1})$ in the unit ball. When the weight is constant, it is known that the bifurcation curve has infinitely many turning points if the dimension $N\le 9$, and it has no turning points if $N\ge 10$. In this paper, we show that the perturbation of the weight does not affect the bifurcation structure when $N\le 9$. Moreover, we find specific radial singular solutions with specific weights and study the Morse index of the solutions. As a consequence, we prove that the perturbation affects the bifurcation structure in the critical dimension $N=10$. Moreover, we give an optimal classification of the bifurcation diagrams in the critical dimension.