Fractional elliptic systems with critical nonlinearities

TL;DR

This paper investigates positive solutions to a fractional elliptic system with critical nonlinearities, establishing uniqueness of ground states without external forces and existence of multiple solutions with small nonnegative perturbations.

Contribution

It proves the uniqueness of ground state solutions when external forces are zero and demonstrates the existence of multiple solutions under small nonnegative perturbations.

Findings

Unique ground state solution when f=g=0.

Existence of at least two solutions with small nonnegative f and g.

Complete description of Palais-Smale sequences for the system.

Abstract

In this paper we study positive solutions to the following nonlocal system of equations: \begin{equation*} \left\{\begin{aligned} &(-\Delta)^s u = \frac{\alpha}{2_s^*}|u|^{\alpha-2}u|v|^{\beta}+f(x)\;\;\text{in}\;\mathbb{R}^{N}, &(-\Delta)^s v = \frac{\beta}{2_s^*}|v|^{\beta-2}v|u|^{\alpha}+g(x)\;\;\text{in}\;\mathbb{R}^{N}, & \qquad u, \, v >0\, \mbox{ in }\,\mathbb{R}^{N}, \end{aligned} \right. \end{equation*} where $N>2s$, $\alpha,\,\beta>1$, $\alpha+\beta=2N/(N-2s)$, and $f,\, g$ are nonnegative functionals in the dual space of $\dot{H}^s(\mathbb{R}^{N})$. When $f=0=g$, we show that the ground state solution of the above system is {\it unique}. On the other hand, when $f$ and $g$ are nontrivial nonnegative functionals with ker$(f)$=ker$(g)$, then we establish the existence of at least two different positive solutions of the above system provided that $\|f\|_{(\dot{H}^s)'}$ and $\|g\|_{(\dot{H}^s)'}$ are small enough. Moreover, we also provide a global compactness result, which gives a complete description of the Palais-Smale sequences of the above system.