Failure of Palais-Smale condition and blow-up analysis for the critical exponent problem in \(\mathbb{R}^2\) (Q1386779)

The authors consider global compactness properties of the energy functional \(J:H^1_0 (\Omega) \to\mathbb{R}\) defined by \[ J(u)= (1/2)\int_\Omega |\nabla u|^2 dx- \int_\Omega F(u)dx, \] which is associated to a Dirichlet boundary problem: \(-\Delta u=f(u)\) in \(\Omega\), \(u|_{\partial \Omega} =0\); \(\Omega\) is a smooth bounded domain in \(\mathbb{R}^2\); \(f\) is a sufficiently smooth real scalar function behaving like \(\exp(s^2)\) as \(s\to \infty\); \(F\) is the primitive of \(f\). It is shown that \(J\) fails to satisfy the Palais-Smale (PS) condition at the energy levels \(k/2>0\) along two PS sequences, which exhibit different blow-up behaviours. The first PS sequence is the sequence of ``Moser functions'' whereas the second one consists of solutions to the problem \(-\Delta u=h(u) \exp (4\pi u^2)\) in a disc \(B(R) \subset \mathbb{R}^2\) of radius \(R\) centered at the origin, \(u|_{B(R)} >0\), \(u|_{\partial B(R)} =0\); \(h(s)s\to\infty\) as \(s\to \infty\). A surprising result is that the above stated two PS sequences exhibit different blow-up behaviours, contrasting with the problem in higher dimensions where there is essentially only one type of PS sequence for \(J\). The main result is generalized by replacing \(-\Delta\) with the \(n\)-Laplacian in \(\mathbb{R}^n\) \((n\geq 2)\).