On existence and concentration of solutions to a class of quasilinear problems involving the 1-Laplace operator (Q1674630)

The authors consider quasilinear elliptic problems of the form \[ \begin{cases} -\epsilon\Delta_1u+V(x){u\over|u|}=f(u)&\text{in }\mathbb{R}^N\\ u\in BV(\mathbb{R}^N),\end{cases}\leqno{(1)} \] where \(\epsilon>0\), \(N\geq2\), the nonlinearity \(f\) and the potential \(V\) verify suitable assumptions, and \(\Delta_1\) is the 1-Laplacian, formally defined as \[ \Delta_1u=\text{div\,}\Big({\nabla u\over|\nabla u|}\Big). \] Problem (1) is the Euler-Lagrange equation associated to the functional defined on \(BV(\mathbb{R}^N)\) by \[ I_\epsilon(u)=\int_{\mathbb{R}^N}|Du|+\int_{\mathbb{R}^N}V(x)|u|\,dx-\int_{\mathbb{R}^N}F(u)\,dx, \] where \(|Du|\) is the total variation of the vector measure \(Du\), and \(F\) is the primitive of \(f\) with \(F(0)=0\). Since the problem is raised on the entire space \(\mathbb{R}^N\) a lack of compactness may occur; this is overcome by means of the concentrated compactness principle due to Lions. The main results of the paper are below. {Theorem 1.} {There exists \(\epsilon_0\) such that for every \(0<\epsilon<\epsilon_0\) problem (1) admits a solution \(u_\epsilon\). Moreover, for every sequence \(\epsilon_n\to0\), up to a subsequence, the family \(u_{\epsilon_n}\) concentrates around a minimum point of the potential \(V\).} {Theorem 2.} {Under a different set of assumptions on \(f\) and \(V\), for every \(\epsilon>0\) there exists a solution \(u_\epsilon\) of problem (1).}