Symmetry properties of semilinear elliptic equations with isolated singularities

Abstract

In this thesis we use the method of moving planes to establish symmetry properties for positive solutions of semilinear elliptic equations. We give a detailed proof of the result due to Caffarelli, Gidas, and Spruck that a solution in the punctured ball, B\{0}, behaves asymptotically like its spherical average at the origin. We also show that a solution with an isolated singularity in the upper half space Rn+ must be cylindrically symmetric about some axis orthogonal to the boundary aRn+.