We deal with the problem ⎧ -Δu = f(x,u) + λg(x,u), in Ω, ⎨ ($P_{\lambda }$) ⎩ $u_{\mid \partial \Omega }=0$ where Ω ⊂ ℝⁿ is a bounded domain, λ ∈ ℝ, and f,g: Ω×ℝ → ℝ are two Carathéodory functions with f(x,0) = g(x,0) = 0. Under suitable assumptions, we prove that there exists λ* > 0 such that, for each λ ∈ (0,λ*), problem ($P_{\lambda }$) admits a non-zero, non-negative strong solution $u_{\lambda }\in {\bigcap }_{p\ge 2}{W}^{2,p}\left(\Omega \right)$ such that $li{m}_{\lambda \to 0⁺}\left|\right|u_{\lambda }{\left|\right|}_{W^{2,p}\left(\Omega \right)}=0$ for all p ≥ 2. Moreover, the function $\lambda \mapsto I_{\lambda }\left(u_{\lambda }\right)$ is negative and decreasing in ]0,λ*[, where $I_{\lambda }$ is the energy functional related to ($P_{\lambda }$).

We prove a formula relating the index of a solution and the rotation number of a certain complex vector along bifurcation diagrams.

We show that the critical nonlinear elliptic Neumann problem $\Delta u-\mu u+u^{7/3}=0$ in $\Omega$, $u>0$ in $\Omega$, $\frac{\partial u}{\partial \nu }=0$ on $\partial \Omega$, where $\Omega$ is a bounded and smooth domain in ${ℝ}^5$, has arbitrarily many solutions, provided that $\mu >0$ is small enough. More precisely, for any positive integer $K$, there exists ${\mu }_K>0$ such that for $0<\mu <{\mu }_K$, the above problem has a nontrivial solution which blows up at $K$ interior points in $\Omega$, as $\mu \to 0$. The location of the blow-up points is related to the domain geometry. The solutions are obtained as critical points of some finite-dimensional...