A sharp inequality of Trudinger-Moser type and extremal functions in \(H^{1, n}(\mathbb{R}^n)\) (Q2339465)

This paper deals with a sharp form of the Trudinger-Moser inequality in the Sobolev space \(H^{1,n}(\mathbb{R}^n)\), \(n\geq 2\). For any \(\alpha\geq 0\), the authors define \[ \ell(\alpha)= \sup_{\{u\in H^{1,n}:\| u\|_{1,n}= 1\}} \int_{\mathbb{R}^n} \phi\cdot \nu_\alpha(u)\,dx, \] where \[ \phi(t)= e^t- \sum^{n-1}_{i=0} {t^i\over i!},\;\nu_\alpha(u)= \beta_n(1+\alpha\| u\|^n_n)^{{1\over n-1}}|u|^{{n\over n-1}}, \] \(\beta_n= n\,\omega^{{1\over n-1}}_{n-1}\) and \(\omega_{n-1}\) is the measure of the unit sphere in \(\mathbb{R}^n\). The main results here can be formulated as follows: 1) For any \(\alpha\in [0,1]\), we have \(\ell(\alpha)<\infty\) and, moreover, \(\ell(\alpha)\) is attained for an appropriate extremal function; 2) For any \(\alpha>1\), the supremum \(\ell(\alpha)=\infty\). The proof is done by using the method of blow up analysis, combined with the Lions concentration compactness approach and the Carleson-Chang procedure.