Least energy positive soultions for $d$-coupled Schr\"{o}dinger systems with critical exponent in dimension three

TL;DR

This paper investigates the existence of least energy positive solutions for coupled Schrödinger systems with critical exponent in three dimensions, using variational methods and induction, and compares phenomena with higher-dimensional cases.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive analysis of least energy positive solutions for critical Schrödinger systems in three dimensions, including existence results and nonexistence phenomena.

Findings

Existence of least energy positive solutions for weakly cooperative and purely competitive cases.

Development of refined energy estimates for the system.

New nonexistence results contrasting higher-dimensional cases.

Abstract

In the present paper, we consider the coupled Schr\"{o}dinger systems with critical exponent: \begin{equation*} \begin{cases} -\Delta u_i+\lambda_{i}u_i=\sum\limits_{j=1}^{d} \beta_{ij}|u_j|^{3}|u_i|u_i \quad ~\text{ in } \Omega,\\ u_i \in H_0^1(\Omega) ,\quad i= 1,2,...,d. \end{cases} \end{equation*} Here, $\Omega\subset \mathbb{R}^{3}$ is a smooth bounded domain, $d \geq 2$, $\beta_{ii}>0$ for every $i$, and $\beta_{ij}=\beta_{ji}$ for $i \neq j$. We study a Br\'{e}zis-Nirenberg type problem: $-\lambda_{1}(\Omega)<\lambda_{1},\cdots,\lambda_{d}<-\lambda^*(\Omega)$, where $\lambda_{1}(\Omega)$ is the first eigenvalue of $-\Delta$ with Dirichlet boundary conditions and $\lambda^*(\Omega)\in (0, \lambda_1(\Omega))$. We acquire the existence of least energy positive solutions to this system for weakly cooperative case ($\beta_{ij}>0$ small) and for purely competitive case ($\beta_{ij}\leq 0$) by variational arguments. The proof is performed by mathematical induction on the number of equations, and requires more refined energy estimates for this system. Besides, we present a new nonexistence result, revealing some different phenomena comparing with the higher-dimensional case $N\geq 5$. It seems that this is the first paper to give a rather complete picture for the existence of least energy positive solutions to critical Schr\"{o}dinger system in dimension three.