%0 Journal Article %J Advances in Mathematics %D 2015 %T A general existence result for the Toda system on compact surfaces %A Luca Battaglia %A Aleks Jevnikar %A Andrea Malchiodi %A David Ruiz %K Geometric PDEs %K Min–max schemes %K Variational methods %X

In this paper we consider the following Toda system of equations on a compact surface:−Δu1=2ρ1(h1eu1∫Σh1eu1dVg−1)−ρ2(h2eu2∫Σh2eu2dVg−1)−Δu1=−4π∑j=1mα1,j(δpj−1),−Δu2=2ρ2(h2eu2∫Σh2eu2dVg−1)−ρ1(h1eu1∫Σh1eu1dVg−1)−Δu2=−4π∑j=1mα2,j(δpj−1), which is motivated by the study of models in non-abelian Chern–Simons theory. Here h1,h2 are smooth positive functions, ρ1,ρ2 two positive parameters, pi points of the surface and α1,i,α2,j non-negative numbers. We prove a general existence result using variational methods. The same analysis applies to the following mean field equation−Δu=ρ1(heu∫ΣheudVg−1)−ρ2(he−u∫Σhe−udVg−1), which arises in fluid dynamics."

%B Advances in Mathematics %V 285 %P 937 - 979 %G eng %U http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001870815003072 %R https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aim.2015.07.036