Critical equations with a sharp change of sign in the nonlinearity

Abstract: We establish the existence and nonexistence of entire solutions to a semilinear elliptic problem whose nonlinearity is the critical power multiplied by a function that takes the value 1 in an open bounded region and the value -1 in its complement. The existence or not of solutions depends on the geometry of the bounded region, in a way analogous to what happens with the classical critical Dirichlet problem in a bounded domain. Our methods are variational and include the use of topological tools.