Periodic solutions for critical fractional problems

TL;DR

This paper proves the existence of nonconstant periodic solutions for a class of non-local fractional critical problems using variational methods and an extension technique, covering both positive and zero mass cases.

Contribution

It introduces a novel application of the Linking Theorem to fractional problems with critical Sobolev exponents in a periodic setting, including the zero mass case.

Findings

Existence of nonconstant periodic solutions for m>0.

Extension method transforms non-local problems into degenerate elliptic problems.

Results are new for both positive and zero mass cases.

Abstract

We deal with the existence of $2\pi$-periodic solutions to the following non-local critical problem \begin{equation*} \left\{\begin{array}{ll} [(-\Delta_{x}+m^{2})^{s}-m^{2s}]u=W(x)|u|^{2^{*}_{s}-2}u+ f(x, u) &\mbox{in} (-\pi,\pi)^{N} \\ u(x+2\pi e_{i})=u(x) &\mbox{for all} x \in \mathbb{R}^{N}, \quad i=1, \dots, N, \end{array} \right. \end{equation*} where $s\in (0,1)$, $N \geq 4s$, $m\geq 0$, $2^{*}_{s}=\frac{2N}{N-2s}$ is the fractional critical Sobolev exponent, $W(x)$ is a positive continuous function, and $f(x, u)$ is a superlinear $2\pi$-periodic (in $x$) continuous function with subcritical growth. When $m>0$, the existence of a nonconstant periodic solution is obtained by applying the Linking Theorem, after transforming the above non-local problem into a degenerate elliptic problem in the half-cylinder $(-\pi,\pi)^{N}\times (0, \infty)$, with a nonlinear Neumann boundary condition, through a suitable variant of the extension method in periodic setting. We also consider the case $m=0$ by using a careful procedure of limit. As far as we know, all these results are new.