Morse homology for a class of elliptic partial differential equations

Abstract: In this paper we show that a notion of non-degeneracy which allows to develop Morse theory is generically satisfied for a large class of $C^2$-functionals defined on Banach spaces. The main element of novelty with respect to the previous work of the first and third author is that we do not assume the splitting induced by the second differential at a critical point to persist in a neighborhood, provided one can give precise estimates on how much persistence fails. This allows us to enlarge significantly the class of elliptic pde's for which non-degeneracy holds and Morse homology can be defined. A concrete example is given by equations involving the $p$-Laplacian, $p\leq n$. As a byproduct, we provide a criterion of independent interest to check whether critical points are non-degenerate in the sense above, and give an abstract construction of Morse homology in a Banach setting for functionals satisfying the Cerami condition.