An extended equivariant branching theory

Recent monographs and research articles have demonstrated that the highly complicated bifurcation structure, which usually arises in the presence of high symmetries, can often be systematically reduced with group theoretic concepts. Equivariant branching theorems and bifurcation subgroups have been the principle tools in this direction of investigation. The generalizations given allow the discussions of new classes of problems and the weakening of the usual hypotheses of absolute irreducibility of the group representation or of the appropriate subspaces. These extensions are illustrated in the case of a class of planar semilinear elliptic partial differential equations, which are usually treated as model problems in fluid mechanics and chemical reactions.