Constrained energy minimization and orbital stability for the NLS equation on a star graph

TL;DR

This paper studies the existence and stability of standing waves for the nonlinear Schrödinger equation on a star graph with an attractive delta interaction, identifying a critical mass threshold for stability.

Contribution

It extends the concentration-compactness method to star graphs with delta interactions, establishing conditions for energy minimization and orbital stability of standing waves.

Findings

Existence of a critical mass $m^*$ below which energy minimizers exist.

Orbital stability of standing waves for masses below $m^*$.

Non-existence of minimizers for masses above $m^*$.

Abstract

We consider a nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation with focusing nonlinearity of power type on a star graph ${\mathcal G}$, written as $ i \partial_t \Psi (t) = H \Psi (t) - |\Psi (t)|^{2\mu}\Psi (t)$, where $H$ is the selfadjoint operator which defines the linear dynamics on the graph with an attractive $\delta$ interaction, with strength $\alpha < 0$, at the vertex. The mass and energy functionals are conserved by the flow. We show that for $0<\mu<2$ the energy at fixed mass is bounded from below and that for every mass $m$ below a critical mass $m^*$ it attains its minimum value at a certain $\hat \Psi_m \in H^1(\GG) $, while for $m>m^*$ there is no minimum. Moreover, the set of minimizers has the structure ${\mathcal M}={e^{i\theta}\hat \Psi_m, \theta\in \erre}$. Correspondingly, for every $m<m^*$ there exists a unique $\omega=\omega(m)$ such that the standing wave $\hat\Psi_{\omega}e^{i\omega t} $ is orbitally stable. To prove the above results we adapt the concentration-compactness method to the case of a star graph. This is non trivial due to the lack of translational symmetry of the set supporting the dynamics, i.e. the graph. This affects in an essential way the proof and the statement of concentration-compactness lemma and its application to minimization of constrained energy. The existence of a mass threshold comes from the instability of the system in the free (or Kirchhoff's) case, that in our setting corresponds to $\al=0$.