Non-existence results for semilinear cooperative elliptic systems via moving spheres

Based upon a new development of the method of moving spheres, we introduce a new and general approach for non-existence of positive solutions of cooperative semilinear elliptic systems with the Laplacian as principal part. For super-critical nonlinearities we prove non-existence on bounded star-shaped domains. For subcritical nonlinearities we obtain non-existence results on a class of unbounded domains, which includes e.g. the entire space, certain curved halfspaces and the complement of bounded star-shaped domains. As a by-product we also get a symmetry result on halfspaces. (C) 2000 Academic Press.