Bifurcating domains for an overdetermined eigenvalue problem in cylinders

Abstract

We study an overdetermined eigenvalue problem for domains $Ω$ contained in the half-cylinder $Σ=ω\times (0, +\infty)$, based on a bounded regular domain $ω\subset \mathbb{R}^{N-1}$. It is easy to see that in any bounded cylinder $Ω_{t}=ω\times (0, t)$, $t > 0$, the eigenvalue problem admits a one-dimensional positive eigenfunction which satisfies the overdetermined boundary conditions. The aim of the paper is to construct other domains $Ω\subset Σ$ for which there exists a positive eigenfunction that is a solution of the overdetermined problem. This is achieved by showing that branches of such domains bifurcate from the ``trivial'' domains $Ω_{t_j}$ at the values $t_{j} = \fracπ{2\sqrt{σ_j}}$ where $σ_j$ ($j\geq 1$) is a simple Neumann eigenvalue of the Laplace operator on $ω\subset \mathbb{R}^{N-1}$. The solutions can be reflected with respect to $ω$ to generate nontrivial solutions in a cylinder.