Motivated by a problem arising in astrophysics we study a nonlinear elliptic equation in RN with cylindrical symmetry and with singularities on a whole subspace of RN. We study the problem in a variational framework and, as the nonlinearity also displays a critical behavior, we use some suitable version of the Concentration-Compactness Principle. We obtain several results on existence and nonexistence of solutions.

On the unit disk $B_1\subset {ℝ}^2$ we study the Moser-Trudinger functional $E\left(u\right)={\int }_{B_1}\left(e^{u^2}-1\right)dx,u\in H_0^1\left(B_1\right)$ and its restrictions ${E|}_{M_{\Lambda }}$, where $M_{\Lambda }:=\{u\in H_0^1\left(B_1\right){:\parallel u\parallel }_{H_0^1}^2=\Lambda \}$ for $\Lambda >0$. We prove that if a sequence $u_k$ of positive critical points of ${E|}_{M_{{\Lambda }_k}}$ (for some ${\Lambda }_k>0$) blows up as $k\to \infty$, then ${\Lambda }_k\to 4\pi$, and $u_k\to 0$ weakly in $H_0^1\left(B_1\right)$ and strongly in $C_{\mathrm{loc}}^1({\overline{B}}_1\setminus \left\{0\right\})$. Using this fact we also prove that when $\Lambda$ is large enough, then ${E|}_{M_{\Lambda }}$ has no positive critical point, complementing previous existence results by Carleson-Chang, M. Struwe and Lamm-Robert-Struwe.