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Infinitely many weak solutions for a fractional Schrödinger equation
Boundary Value Problems volume 2014, Article number: 159 (2014)
Abstract
In this paper we are concerned with the fractional Schrödinger equation , , where , , stands for the fractional Laplacian of order α, V is a positive continuous potential, and f is a continuous subcritical nonlinearity. We obtain the existence of infinitely many weak solutions for the above problem by the fountain theorem in critical point theory.
Introduction
In this paper we consider the following fractional Schrödinger equation:
where , , stands for the fractional Laplacian of order α, and the potential is a continuous function satisfying
-
(V)
.
The nonlinearity is a continuous function, satisfying the subcritical condition.
(H1) There exist , and such that
where is the fractional critical exponent.
Recently, there have appeared plenty of works on the fractional Schrödinger equations; for example, see [[1]–[11]] and the references therein. In [[1]], Shang and Zhang considered the critical fractional Schrödinger equation
where ε and λ are positive parameters, V and f satisfy (V) and (H1), respectively. They obtained the result that (1.2) has a nonnegative ground state solution and investigated the relation between the number of solutions and the topology of the set where V attains its minimum for all sufficiently large λ and small ε. In [[2]], Shang et al. considered the existence of nontrivial solutions for (1.2) with , where .
In [[8]], Hua and Yu studied the critical fractional Laplacian equation
where , , is a bounded domain. They obtained the result that the problem (1.3) possesses a nontrivial ground state solution for any .
In [[7]], Secchi investigated the existence of radially symmetric solutions for (1.1) replacing by , where g satisfies the following conditions.
(g1) is of class for some , and odd,
(g2) ,
(g3) ,
(g4) for some such that .
Inspired by the mentioned papers, we first establish a compact embedding lemma via a fractional Gagliardo-Nirenberg inequality. Then by virtue of the fountain theorem in critical point theory, we get two existence results of infinitely many weak solutions for (1.1).
Preliminary results
In this section we offer some preliminary results which enable us to obtain the main existence theorems. First, we collect some useful facts of the fractional order Sobolev spaces.
For any , the fractional Sobolev space is defined by
endowed with the norm
where is the so-called Gagliardo semi-norm of u. Let be the Schwartz space of rapidly decaying functions in , for any and , and let be defined as
The symbol P.V. stands for the Cauchy principal value, and is a dimensional constant that depends on N and α, precisely given by .
Indeed, the fractional Laplacian can be viewed as a pseudo-differential operator of symbol , as stated in the following.
Lemma 2.1
(see [[12]])
Letandbe the fractional Laplacian operator defined by (2.1). Then for any,
where ℱ is the Fourier transform, i.e.,
Now we can see that an alternative definition of the fractional Sobolev space via the Fourier transform is as follows:
It can be proved that
As a result, the norms on ,
are all equivalent.
In this paper, in view of the presence of potential , we consider its subspace
We define the norm in E by
where . Moreover, by [[6]], E is a Hilbert space with the inner product
Note that by (2.2) and (2.3), together with the condition (V), we know that is equivalent to the norm
The corresponding inner product is
Throughout out this paper, we will use the norm in E.
Definition 2.2
We say that is a weak solution of (1.1), if
Lemma 2.3
E is continuously embedded intoforand compactly embedded intofor.
Lemma 2.4
E is compactly embedded intoforwith.
Proof
By [[4]], we know E is compactly embedded into , i.e., if there exists a sequence and such that weakly in E, passing to a subsequence if necessary, we have strongly in . Therefore, we only consider . In order to do this, we need the following fractional Gagliardo-Nirenberg inequality, see [[13], Corollary 2.3]. Let , , and . Then
with
Note that the dimension , we can take , and then whence as . Consequently, from (2.5) we have
Furthermore, note that (2.4); we see that
Then by (2.6) and , we find
Therefore, E is compactly embedded into for with , as required. This completes the proof. □
The functional associated with (1.1) is defined by
where .
Now, we list our assumptions on f and F.
(H2) uniformly for .
(H3) There exist and such that and
(H4) for .
(H5) There exist , such that
(H6) for all .
Remark 2.5
-
(1)
Let , for all and . Then (H1), (H2), (H4), and (H6) hold. Moreover, we easily have and , so (H3) is satisfied.
However, we can see that does not satisfy the Ambrosetti-Rabinowitz condition (see [[6], ()]):
(AR) there is a constant such that
Indeed, is impossible for all and .
-
(2)
Let and , for all and . Then (H1), (H2), (H4), and (H6) hold. Moreover, from , and (H5) holds.
Note that from Theorem 4 in [[14]] we have (H4) and (H5) imply (H2).
Lemma 2.6
(see [[15], Lemma 1])
Let (V) and (H1) hold. Thenand its derivative
Moreover, the critical points of J are weak solutions of (1.1).
To complete the proofs of our theorems, we need the following critical point theorems in [[16]–[19]].
Definition 2.7
Let be a real Banach space, . We say that J satisfies the () condition if any sequence such that and as has a convergent subsequence.
Let X be a Banach space equipped with the norm and , where for any . Set and .
Lemma 2.8
Letbe a real reflexive Banach space, satisfies the () condition for anyand J is even. If for each sufficiently large, there existsuch that the following conditions hold:
-
(i)
as ,
-
(ii)
,
then the functional J has an unbounded sequence of critical values, i.e., there exists a sequencesuch thatandas.
In the following, we will introduce a variant fountain theorem by Zou [[16]]. Let X and the subspace and be defined above. Consider the following -functional defined by
Lemma 2.9
If the functional satisfies
(T1) maps bounded sets to bounded sets uniformly for, and, moreover, for all,
(T2) for all; moreover, oras,
(T3) there existsuch that
then
whereand. Moreover, for a.e. , there exists a sequencesuch that
Remark 2.10
As mentioned in [[6]], E is a Hilbert space. Let be an orthonormal basis of E and define , , and , . Clearly, with for all .
Existence of weak solutions for (1.1)
Theorem 3.1
Assume that (V), (H1)-(H4), and (H6) hold. Then (1.1) has infinitely many weak solutionssatisfying
Proof
We first prove that J satisfies the () condition for any . Let be a () sequence, i.e.,
which implies that
In what follows, we shall show that is bounded. Otherwise, up to a subsequence, is unbounded in E, and we may assume that as . We define the sequence by , . Clearly, and for any n. Going over, if necessary, to a subsequence, we may assume that
Suppose that in E. Dividing by in both sides of (2.7), noting that , we obtain
On the other hand, denote , by (H2), for all , and we find
If , using Fatou’s lemma, we obtain
This contradicts (3.4). Hence, has zero measure, i.e., a.e. in . Let such that
Then we claim is bounded. If , ; if , . Therefore, is bounded when . If for n large enough
Consequently, by (H3), noting that (3.1) and (3.2) hold, we have
where is a positive constant. But fixing any , we let . Note that from (H1) we see that there exist , such that
Then by (3.3) we have
Then for n large enough,
This also contradicts (3.5).
Now the sequence is bounded, as required. Next, we verify that has a convergent subsequence. Without loss of generality, we assume that
Combining this with (H1) and the Hölder inequality, we see
Consequently,
with the fact that when . Therefore, we prove that J satisfies the () condition for any .
Clearly, by (H6). It remains to prove that the conditions (i) and (ii) of Lemma 2.8 hold. Let with , where is defined in Remark 2.10. Then by Lemma 3.8 of [[19]], as for the fact that .
Now for with , we obtain
Hence,
Next we shall prove that, for any finite dimensional subspace , we have
Suppose the contrary. For some sequence with , there is a such that for all . Put and then . Up to a subsequence, assume that weakly in E. Since , in E, a.e. on , and . Denote , then and for a.e. , . It follows from (2.7) that
But, for large n, on account of F being nonnegative, (H2) and Fatou’s Lemma enable us to obtain
as . This contradicts (3.10). Consequently, (3.9) holds, as required. Note that in Remark 2.10, and there exist positive constants such that
Combining this and (3.8), we can take , and thus . Until now, we have proved the functional J satisfies all the conditions of Lemma 2.8. Hence, J has an unbounded sequence of critical values, i.e., there exists a sequence such that and as . This completes the proof. □
We prove that there exists ( is determined in (H5)) such that
Indeed, by (3.6) we see
This, together with (H1), implies that
Clearly, (3.12) holds true with . In the following theorem, we make the following assumption instead of (V):
(V′): , , where in (3.12), β in (H5).Especially, by (V′), we obtain
Now, we define a class of functionals on E by
It is easy to know that for all and the critical points of correspond to the weak solutions of problem (1.1). Note that , where J is the functional defined in (2.7).
Theorem 3.2
Assume that (V′), (H1), and (H4)-(H6) hold. Then (1.1) possesses infinitely many weak solutions.
Proof
We first prove that there exist a positive integer and two sequences as such that
where and are defined in Remark 2.10.
Step 1. We claim that (3.14) is true.
By (3.6) and (H4) we have
Since with , and from Theorem 3.1 we have
Let as . Then there exists such that , . Therefore,
Step 2. We show that (3.15) is true.
We apply the method in Lemma 2.6 of [[20]] to verify the claim. First, we prove that there exists such that
There would otherwise exist a sequence such that
For each , let . Then , and
Passing to a subsequence if necessary, we may assume in E for some since is of finite dimension. We easily find . Consequently, there exists a constant such that
Indeed, if not, then we have
which implies
This leads to , contradicting . In view of and the equivalence of any two norms on , we have
For every , denote
and , where is defined by (3.20). Then for n large enough, by (3.20), we see
Consequently, for n large enough, we find
This contradicts (3.22). Therefore, (3.17) holds. For the ε given in (3.17), we let
Then by (3.17), we find
As is well known, (H5) implies (H2), and hence for any , there is a constant such that
where ε is determined in (3.17). Therefore,
Now for any , if we take , so is large enough, we have
Step 3. Clearly, implies that maps bounded sets to bounded sets uniformly for . In view of (H6), for all . Thus the condition (T1) of Lemma 2.9 holds. Besides, the condition (T2) of Lemma 2.9 holds for the fact that as and since . Evidently, Step 1 and Step 2 imply that the condition (T3) of Lemma 2.9 also holds for all . Consequently, Lemma 2.9 implies that for any and a.e. , there exists a sequence such that
where
Furthermore, we easily have , , where and as .
Claim 1. possesses a strong convergent subsequence in E, a.e. and . In fact, by the boundedness of , passing to a subsequence, as , we may assume in E. By the method of Theorem 3.1, we easily prove that strongly in E.
Thus, for each , we can choose such that for the sequence we have obtained a convergent subsequence, and passing again to a subsequence, we may assume
Thus we obtain
Claim 2. is bounded in E and has a convergent subsequence with the limit for all . For convenience, we set for all . Consequently, (3.12) and (H5) imply that
Therefore, is bounded in E. By Claim 1, we see that has a convergent subsequence, which converges to an element for all .
Hence, passing to the limit in (3.24), we see and , and . Since as , we get infinitely many nontrivial critical points of . Therefore (1.1) possesses infinitely many nontrivial solutions by Lemma 2.9. This completes the proof. □
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Acknowledgements
The authors are highly grateful for the referees’ careful reading of this paper and their comments. Supported by the NNSF-China (11371117), Shandong Provincial Natural Science Foundation (ZR2013AM009) and Hebei Provincial Natural Science Foundation (A2012402036).
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WD and JX obtained the results in a joint research. All the authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Dong, W., Xu, J. & Wei, Z. Infinitely many weak solutions for a fractional Schrödinger equation. Bound Value Probl 2014, 159 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13661-014-0159-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s13661-014-0159-6