A generalized min–max theorem for functionals of strongly indefinite sign

We consider non-linear Schrödinger equations of the following type: $$\begin{aligned} \left\{ \begin{array}{l} -\Delta u(x) + V(x)u(x)-q(x)|u(x)|^\sigma u(x) = \lambda u(x), \quad x\in \mathbb{R }^N \\ u\in H^1(\mathbb{R }^N)\setminus \{0\}, \end{array} \right. \end{aligned}$$ where $N\ge 1$ and $\sigma >0$ . We will concentrate on the case where both $V$ and $q$ are periodic, and we will analyse what happens for different values of $\lambda $ inside a spectral gap $]\lambda ^-,\lambda ^+[$ . We derive both the existence of multiple orbits of solutions and the bifurcation of solutions when $\lambda \nearrow \lambda ^+$ . Thereby we use the corresponding energy function ${I_\lambda }$ and we derive a new variational characterization of multiple critical levels for such functionals: in this way we get multiple orbits of solutions. One main advantage of our new view on some specific critical values $c_0(\lambda )\le c_1(\lambda )\le \cdots \le c_n(\lambda )\le \cdots $ is a multiplicity result telling us something about the number of critical points with energies below $c_n(\lambda )$ , even if for example two of these values $c_i(\lambda )$ and $c_j(\lambda )$ ( $0\le i<j\le n$ ) coincide. Let us close this summary by mentioning another main advantage of our variational characterization of critical levels: we present our result in an abstract setting that is suitable for other problems and we give some hints about such problems (like the case corresponding to a Coulomb potential $V$ ) at the end of the present paper.     

Bound states of nonlinear Schrödinger equations with magnetic fields

We study bound states of the following nonlinear Schr?dinger equation in the presence of a magnetic field: $$ \left\{\begin{array}{l} \left(-i\hbar\nabla+A(x)\right)^2u+V(x)u=g(x,|u|)u \\ |u|\in H^1(\mathbb{R}^N) \end{array} \right. $$ where ${A: \mathbb{R}^N\to\mathbb{R}^N, V: \mathbb{R}^N\to\mathbb{R}}$ and ${g: \mathbb{R}^N\times\mathbb{R}\to [0,\infty)}$ . We prove that if V is bounded below with the set ${\{x\in\mathbb{R}^N: V(x) < b\}\not=\emptyset}$ having finite measure for some b?>?0, inf V???0, and g satisfies some growth conditions, then for any integer m when ${\hbar >0 }$ is sufficiently small the problem has m geometrically different solutions.     

Local estimates for parabolic equations with nonlinear gradient terms

In this paper we deal with local estimates for parabolic problems in ${\mathbb{R}^N}$ with absorbing first order terms, whose model is $$\left\{\begin{array}{l@{\quad}l}u_t- \Delta u +u |\nabla u|^q = f(t,x) \quad &{\rm in}\, (0,T) \times \mathbb{R}^N\,,\\u(0,x)= u_0 (x) &{\rm in}\, \mathbb{R}^N \,,\quad\end{array}\right.$$ where ${T >0 , \, N\geq 2,\, 1 < q \leq 2,\, f(t,x)\in L^1\left( 0,T; L^1_{\rm loc} \left(\mathbb{R}^N\right)\right)}$ and ${u_0\in L^1_{\rm loc}\left(\mathbb{R}^{N}\right)}$ .     

Ground states for nonlinear Kirchhoff equations with critical growth

This paper is concerned with the existence, multiplicity and concentration behavior of positive solutions for the critical Kirchhoff-type problem $$\begin{aligned} \left\{ \begin{array}{l@{\quad }l} -\left(\varepsilon ^2a+\varepsilon b\int _{\mathbb{R }^{3}}|\nabla u|^2\right)\Delta u+V(x)u=u^{2^*-1}+\lambda f(u)&\text{ in}~{\mathbb{R }^{3}},\\ u\in H^1({\mathbb{R }^{3}}), ~u(x)>0&\text{ in}~{\mathbb{R }^{3}}, \end{array}\right. \end{aligned}$$ where $\varepsilon $ and $\lambda $ are positive parameters, and $a,b>0$ are constants, $2^*(=6)$ is the critical Sobolev exponent in dimension three, $V$ is a positive continuous potential satisfying some conditions, and $f$ is a subcritical nonlinear term. We use the variational methods to relate the number of solutions with the topology of the set where $V$ attains its minimum, for all sufficiently large $\lambda $ and small $\varepsilon $ .     

A smooth global branch of solutions for a semilinear elliptic equation on {\mathbb{R}^N}

The existence of a global branch of positive spherically symmetric solutions ${\{(\lambda,u(\lambda)):\lambda\in(0,\infty)\}}$ of the semilinear elliptic equation $$\Delta u - \lambda u + V(x)|u|^{p-1}u = 0 \quad \text{in}\,\mathbb{R}^N\,\text{with}\,N\geq3$$ is proved for ${1 < p < 1+\frac{4-2b}{N-2}}$ , where ${b\in(0,2)}$ is such that the radial function V vanishes at infinity like |x|^?b . V is allowed to be singular at the origin but not worse than |x|^?b . The mapping ${\lambda\mapsto u(\lambda)}$ is of class ${C^r((0,\infty),H^1(\mathbb{R}^N))}$ if ${V\in C^r(\mathbb{R}^N\setminus\{0\},\mathbb{R})}$ , for r = 0, 1. Further properties of regularity and decay at infinity of solutions are also established. This work is a natural continuation of previous results by Stuart and the author, concerning the existence of a local branch of solutions of the same equation for values of the bifurcation parameter λ in a right neighbourhood of λ = 0. The variational structure of the equation is deeply exploited and the global continuation is obtained via an implicit function theorem.     

Young measures generated by sequences in Morrey spaces

Let ${\Omega\subset\mathbb{R}^n}$ be open and bounded. For 1 ≤ p < ∞ and 0 ≤ λ < n, we give a characterization of Young measures generated by sequences of functions ${\{{\bf f}_j\}_{j=1}^\infty}$ uniformly bounded in the Morrey space ${L^{p,\lambda}(\Omega;\mathbb{R}^N)}$ with ${\{\left|{{\bf f}_j}\right|^p\}_{j=1}^\infty}$ equiintegrable. We then treat the case that each f _j = ? u _j for some ${{\bf u}_j\in W^{1,p}(\Omega;\mathbb{R}^N)}$ . As an application of our results, we consider the functional $${\bf u} \mapsto \int\limits_{\Omega}f({\bf x}, {\bf u}({\bf x}), {\bf {\nabla}}{\bf u}({\bf x})){\rm d}{\bf x},$$ and provide conditions that guarantee the existence of a minimizing sequence with gradients uniformly bounded in ${L^{p,\lambda}(\Omega;\mathbb{R}^{N\times n})}$ .     

Strongly nonlinear multivalued elliptic equations on a bounded domain

In this work we study the existence of nontrivial solution for the following class of multivalued quasilinear problems $$\begin{aligned} \displaystyle -\text{ div } ( \phi (|\nabla u|) \nabla u) - b(u)u \in \lambda \partial F(x,u)\;\text{ in }\;\Omega , \quad u=0\; \text{ on }\;\partial \Omega \end{aligned}$$ where $\Omega \subset \mathbb{R }^N$ is a bounded domain, $N\ge 2$ and $\partial F(x,u)$ is a generalized gradient of $F(x,t)$ with respect to $t$ . The main tools utilized are Variational Methods for Locally Lipschitz Functional and a Concentration Compactness Theorem for Orlicz space.     

Semiclassical limits of ground state solutions to Schrödinger systems

This paper is concerned with the existence and concentration properties of the ground state solutions to the following coupled Schrödinger systems $$\begin{aligned} \left\{ \begin{array}{l} -\varepsilon ^2\varDelta u+u+V(x)v=W(x)G_{v}(z)~\hbox { in }\ {\mathbb {R}}^N,\\ -\varepsilon ^2\varDelta v+v+V(x)u=W(x)G_{u}(z)~\hbox {in } \ {\mathbb {R}}^N,\\ u(x)\rightarrow 0\ \hbox {and }v(x)\rightarrow 0\ \hbox {as } \ |x|\rightarrow \infty , \end{array} \right. \end{aligned}$$ and $$\begin{aligned} \left\{ \begin{array}{l} -\varepsilon ^2\varDelta u+u+V(x)v=W(x)(G_{v}(z)+|z|^{2^*-2}v)~\hbox {in } \ {\mathbb {R}}^N,\\ -\varepsilon ^2\varDelta v+v+V(x)u=W(x)(G_{u}(z)+|z|^{2^*-2}u)~\hbox {in } \ {\mathbb {R}}^N,\\ u(x)\rightarrow 0\ \hbox {and }v(x)\rightarrow 0\ \hbox {as } \ |x|\rightarrow \infty , \end{array} \right. \end{aligned}$$ where \(z=(u,v)\in {\mathbb {R}}^2\) , \(G\) is a power type nonlinearity, having superquadratic growth at both \(0\) and infinity but subcritical, \(V\) can be sign-changing and \(\inf W>0\) . We prove the existence, exponential decay, \(H^2\) -convergence and concentration phenomena of the ground state solutions for small \(\varepsilon >0\) .     

Existence and Multiplicity Results for Some Elliptic Systems in Unbounded Cylinders

We study the following nonlinear elliptic system of Lane–Emden type $$\left\{\begin{array}{ll} -\Delta u = {\rm sgn}(v) |v| ^{p-1} \qquad \qquad \qquad \; {\rm in} \; \Omega , \\ -\Delta v = - \lambda {\rm sgn} (u)|u| \frac{1}{p-1} + f(x, u)\; \; {\rm in}\; \Omega , \\ u = v = 0 \qquad \qquad \qquad \quad \quad \;\;\;\;\; {\rm on}\; \partial \Omega , \end{array}\right.$$ where ${\lambda \in \mathbb{R}}$ . If ${\lambda \geq 0}$ and ${\Omega}$ is an unbounded cylinder, i.e., ${\Omega = \tilde \Omega \times \mathbb{R}^{N-m} \subset \mathbb{R}^{N}}$ , ${N - m \geq 2, m \geq 1}$ , existence and multiplicity results are proved by means of the Principle of Symmetric Criticality and some compact imbeddings in partially spherically symmetric spaces. We are able to state existence and multiplicity results also if ${\lambda \in \mathbb{R}}$ and ${\Omega}$ is a bounded domain in ${\mathbb{R}^{N}, N \geq 3}$ . In particular, a good finite dimensional decomposition of the Banach space in which we work is given.     

Biharmonic elliptic problems involving the 2nd Hessian operator

In this paper we will study the equation $$\begin{aligned} \Delta ^2 u=S_2(D^2u),\quad \Omega \subset \mathbb {R}^N, \end{aligned}$$ with \(N=3,\) where \( S_2(D^2u)(x)=\sum _{1\le i , being \(\lambda _i,\) the solutions to the equation $$\begin{aligned} \mathrm{det}\left( \lambda I-D^2u(x)\right) =0, \end{aligned}$$ \(i=1,\dots ,N,\) and \(\Omega \) is a bounded domain with smooth boundary. We deal with several boundary conditions looking for the appropriate framework to get existence and multiplicity of nontrivial solutions. This kind of equation is related to some models of growth, and for this reason it is natural to study the effect of zero order local reaction terms of the type \(F_{\lambda }(x,u)=\lambda |u|^{p-1}u\) , with \(\lambda \in \mathbb {R}\) , \(\lambda >0\) , and \(0 , and also the solvability of the boundary problems with a source term \(f\) satisfying some integrability hypotheses.     

Global bifurcation for asymptotically linear Schrödinger equations

We prove global asymptotic bifurcation for a very general class of asymptotically linear Schrödinger equations ${\left\{\begin{array}{lll}\Delta u + f(x, u)u = \lambda u \quad {\rm in} \; \mathbb{R}^N,\ u \in H^1(\mathbb{R}^N) \backslash \{0\}, \quad N \; \geqslant \; 1.\qquad\qquad\qquad(1)\end{array}\right.}$ The method is topological, based on recent developments of degree theory. We use the inversion ${u\to v:= u/\Vert u\Vert_X^2}$ in an appropriate Sobolev space ${X=W^{2,p}(\mathbb{R}^{N}),}$ and we first obtain bifurcation from the line of trivial solutions for an auxiliary problem in the variables ${(\lambda,v) \in {\mathbb R}\times X.}$ This problem has a lack of compactness and of regularity, requiring a truncation procedure. Going back to the original problem, we obtain global branches of positive/negative solutions ‘bifurcating from infinity’. We believe that, for the values of λ covered by our bifurcation approach, the existence result we obtain for positive solutions of (1) is the most general so far.     

Extinction profile of the logarithmic diffusion equation

Let ${N \geq 3}$ and u be the solution of u _t = Δ log u in ${\mathbb{R}^N \times (0, T)}$ with initial value u ₀ satisfying ${B_{k_1}(x, 0) \leq u_{0} \leq B_{k_2}(x, 0)}$ for some constants k ₁ > k ₂ > 0 where ${B_k(x, t) = 2(N - 2)(T - t)_{+}^{N/(N - 2)}/(k + (T - t)_{+}^{2/(N - 2)}|x|^{2})}$ is the Barenblatt solution for the equation and ${u_0 - B_{k_0} \in L^{1}(\mathbb{R}^{N})}$ for some constant k ₀ > 0 if ${N \geq 4}$ . We give a new different proof on the uniform convergence and ${L^1(\mathbb{R}^N)}$ convergence of the rescaled function ${\tilde{u}(x, s) = (T - t)^{-N/(N - 2)}u(x/(T - t)^{-1/(N - 2)}, t), s = -{\rm log}(T - t)}$ , on ${\mathbb{R}^N}$ to the rescaled Barenblatt solution ${\tilde{B}_{k_0}(x) = 2(N - 2)/(k_0 + |x|^{2})}$ for some k ₀ > 0 as ${s \rightarrow \infty}$ . When ${N \geq 4, 0 \leq u_0(x) \leq B_{k_0}(x, 0)}$ in ${\mathbb{R}^N}$ , and ${|u_0(x) - B_{k_0}(x, 0)| \leq f \in L^{1}(\mathbb{R}^{N})}$ for some constant k ₀ > 0 and some radially symmetric function f, we also prove uniform convergence and convergence in some weighted L ¹ space in ${\mathbb{R}^N}$ of the rescaled solution ${\tilde{u}(x, s)}$ to ${\tilde{B}_{k_0}(x)}$ as ${s \rightarrow \infty}$ .     

Finite-time blowup for a complex Ginzburg–Landau equation with linear driving

In this paper, we consider the complex Ginzburg–Landau equation ${u_t = e^{i\theta} [\Delta u + |u|^\alpha u] + \gamma u}$ on ${\mathbb{R}^N}$ , where ${\alpha > 0,\,\gamma \in \mathbb{R}}$ and ${-\pi /2 < \theta < \pi /2}$ . By convexity arguments, we prove that, under certain conditions on ${\alpha,\theta,\gamma}$ , a class of solutions with negative initial energy blows up in finite time.     

The Hopf–Lax formula in Carnot groups: a control theoretic approach

The purpose of this paper is to bring a new light on the state-dependent Hamilton–Jacobi equation and its connection with the Hopf–Lax formula in the framework of a Carnot group $(\mathbf G ,\circ ).$ The equation we shall consider is of the form $$\begin{aligned} \left\{ \begin{array}{l@{\quad }l} u_{t}+ \Psi (X_{1}u, \ldots , X_{m}u)=0\qquad &{}(x,t)\in \mathbf G \times (0,\infty ) \\ {u}(x,0)=g(x)&{}x\in \mathbf G , \end{array} \right. \end{aligned}$$ where $X_{1},\ldots , X_{m}$ are a basis of the first layer of the Lie algebra of the group $\mathbf G ,$ and $\Psi : \mathbb{R }^{m} \rightarrow \mathbb{R }$ is a superlinear, convex function. The main result shows that the unique viscosity solution of the Hamilton–Jacobi equation can be given by the Hopf–Lax formula $$\begin{aligned} u(x,t) = \inf _{y\in \mathbf G }\left\{ t \Psi ^\mathbf{G }\left( \delta _{\frac{1}{t}}(y^{-1}\circ x)\right) + g(y) \right\} , \end{aligned}$$ where $\Psi ^\mathbf{G }:\mathbf G \rightarrow \mathbb{R }$ is the $\mathbf G $ -Legendre–Fenchel transform of $\Psi ,$ defined by a control theoretical approach. We recover, as special cases, some known results like the classical Hopf–Lax formula in the Euclidean spaces $\mathbb{R }^n,$ showing that $\Psi ^{\mathbb{R }^n}$ is the Legendre–Fenchel transform $\Psi ^*$ of $\Psi ;$ moreover, we recover the result by Manfredi and Stroffolini in the Heisenberg group for particular Hamiltonian function $\Psi .$ In this paper we follow an optimal control problem approach and we obtain several properties for the value functions $u$ and $\Psi ^\mathbf G .$      

Existence of semiclassical states for a quasilinear Schrödinger equation with critical exponent in {\mathbb{R}^N}

We consider the following perturbed version of quasilinear Schrödinger equation $$\begin{array}{lll}-\varepsilon^2\Delta u +V(x)u-\varepsilon^2\Delta (u^2)u=h(x,u)u+K(x)|u|^{22^*-2}u\end{array}$$ in ${\mathbb{R}^N}$ , where N ≥ 3, 22* = 4N/(N ? 2), V(x) is a nonnegative potential, and K(x) is a bounded positive function. Using minimax methods, we show that this equation has at least one positive solution provided that ${\varepsilon \leq \mathcal{E}}$ ; for any ${m\in\mathbb{N}}$ , it has m pairs of solutions if ${\varepsilon \leq \mathcal{E}_m}$ , where ${\mathcal{E}}$ and ${\mathcal{E}_m}$ are sufficiently small positive numbers. Moreover, these solutions ${u_\varepsilon \to 0}$ in ${H^1(\mathbb{R}^N)}$ as ${\varepsilon \to 0}$ .     

On nonlinear elliptic equations with Hardy potential and L^{1}-data

We consider a class of nonlinear elliptic equations involving the Hardy potential and lower order terms whose simplest model is $$\begin{aligned} -\Delta u +b(|u|)|\nabla u|^{2}+\nu |u|^{s-1}u=\lambda \frac{u}{|x|^{2}}+f \end{aligned}$$ in a bounded open $\varOmega $ of $\mathbf{R }^{N}, N\ge 3,$ containing the origin, $s>\frac{N}{N-2}, \nu $ and $\lambda $ are positive real numbers. We prove that the presence of the term $\nu |u|^{s-1}u$ has an effect on the existence of solutions when $f\in L^{1}(\varOmega )$ assuming only that $b\in L^{1}(\mathbf{R })$ without any sign condition (i.e. $b(s)s\ge 0$ ).     

Regularity of semi-stable solutions to fourth order nonlinear eigenvalue problems on general domains

We examine the fourth order problem $\Delta ^2 u = \lambda f(u) $ in $ \Omega $ with $ \Delta u = u =0 $ on $ {\partial \Omega }$ , where $ \lambda > 0$ is a parameter, $ \Omega $ is a bounded domain in $\mathbb{R }^N$ and where $f$ is one of the following nonlinearities: $ f(u)=e^u$ , $ f(u)=(1+u)^p $ or $ f(u)= \frac{1}{(1-u)^p}$ where $ p>1$ . We show the extremal solution is smooth, provided $$\begin{aligned} N < 2 + 4 \sqrt{2} + 4 \sqrt{ 2 - \sqrt{2}} \approx 10.718 \text{ when} f(u)=e^u, \end{aligned}$$ and $$\begin{aligned} N < \frac{4p}{p-1} + \frac{4(p+1)}{p-1} \left( \sqrt{ \frac{2p}{p+1}} + \sqrt{ \frac{2p}{p+1} - \sqrt{ \frac{2p}{p+1}}} - \frac{1}{2} \right) \end{aligned}$$ when $ f(u)=(u+1)^p$ . New results are also obtained in the case where $ f(u)=(1-u)^{-p}$ . These are substantial improvements to various results on critical dimensions obtained recently by various authors. To do that, we derive a new stability inequality satisfied by minimal solutions of the above equation, which is more amenable to estimates as it allows a method of proof reminiscent of the second order case.     

Nash equilibria on topological semilattices

A function ${u : X \to \mathbb{R}}$ defined on a partially ordered set is quasi-Leontief if, for all ${x \in X}$ , the upper level set ${\{x\prime \in X : u(x\prime) \geq u(x)\}}$ has a smallest element; such an element is an efficient point of u. An abstract game ${u_{i} : \prod^{n}_{j=1} X_j \to \mathbb{R}, i \in \{1, \ldots , n\}}$ , is a quasi-Leontief game if, for all i and all ${(x_{j})_{j \neq i} \in \prod_{j \neq i} X_{j}, u_{i}((x_{j})_{j \neq i};-) : X_{i} \to \mathbb{R}}$ is quasi-Leontief; a Nash equilibrium x* of an abstract game ${u_{i} :\prod^{n}_{j=1} X_{j} \to \mathbb{R}}$ is efficient if, for all ${i, x^{*}_{i}}$ is an efficient point of the partial function ${u_{i}((x^{*}_{j})_{j \neq i};-) : X_{i} \to \mathbb{R}}$ . We establish the existence of efficient Nash equilibria when the strategy spaces X _i are topological semilattices which are Peano continua and Lawson semilattices.     

On the Linear Dependence of a Finite Set of Additive Functions

In this note we prove the following: Let n?≥ 2 be a fixed integer. A system of additive functions ${A_{1},A_{2},\ldots,A_{n}:\mathbb{R} \to\mathbb{R}}$ is linearly dependent (as elements of the ${\mathbb{R}}$ vector space ${\mathbb{R}^{\mathbb{R}}}$ ), if and only if, there exists an indefinite quadratic form ${Q:\mathbb{R}^{n}\to\mathbb{R} }$ such that ${Q(A_{1}(x),A_{2}(x),\ldots,A_{n}(x))\geq 0}$ or ${Q(A_{1}(x),A_{2}(x),\ldots,A_{n}(x))\leq 0}$ holds for all ${x\in\mathbb{R}}$ .     

On the boundary of the attainable set of the dirichlet spectrum

Denoting by ${\varepsilon\subseteq\mathbb{R}^2}$ the set of the pairs ${(\lambda_1(\Omega),\,\lambda_2(\Omega))}$ for all the open sets ${\Omega\subseteq\mathbb{R}^N}$ with unit measure, and by ${\Theta\subseteq\mathbb{R}^N}$ the union of two disjoint balls of half measure, we give an elementary proof of the fact that ${\partial\varepsilon}$ has horizontal tangent at its lowest point ${(\lambda_1(\Theta),\,\lambda_2(\Theta))}$ .