Blow-up and strong instability of standing waves for the NLS-\(\delta\) equation on a star graph (Q1988382)

The present paper is devoted to study the strong instability of the standing wave solutions the NLS [\textit{N. Fukaya} and \textit{M. Ohta}, Osaka J. Math. 56, No. 4, 713--726 (2019; Zbl 1431.35172)] equation with \(\delta\)-interaction on a star graph \(\Gamma\) \[ i\partial_{t}U(t,x)-HU(t,x)+F(U(t,x))U(t,x)=0,\tag{1} \] where \(U(t,x)=(u_{j}(t,x))_{j=1}^{N}:\mathbb{R}\times\mathbb{R}_{+}\rightarrow\mathbb{C}^{N}\), \(F(U(t,x)))=(f_{ij})\), \(i,j=1,\dots,N\) is a diagonal matrix with \(f_{ii}=\left\vert u_{i}\right\vert^{p-1}\), \(p>1\), and \(f_{ij}=0\) if \(i\neq j\), and \(H\) is the self-adjoint operator on \(L^{2}(\Gamma)\) given by \[ \begin{aligned} (HU)(x)& =(-\partial_{x}^{2} u_{j}(x))_{j=1}^{N},\ x>0,\\ D(H)& =\{U\in H^{2}(\Gamma):u_{1}(0)=\dots=u_{N}(0),\sum_{j=1}^{N}u_{j}^{\prime}(0)=\alpha u_{1}(0)\}. \end{aligned}\tag{2} \] Condition (2) is an analog of \(\delta\)-interaction condition for the Schrödinger operator on the line. Let \(U(t,x)=e^{i\omega t}\Phi(x)\) be the standing wave solution, where \(\Phi\) satisfies the stationary equation \[ H\Phi+\omega\Phi-F(\Phi)\Phi=0. \] It is known that the last equation has \([\frac{N-1}{2}]+1\) explicit vector solutions \(\Phi_{k}^{\alpha}=(\varphi_{k,j}^{\alpha})_{j=1}^{N}\), \(k=0,\dots,[\frac{N-1}{2}]\). The authors prove strong instability for \(\Phi_{0}^{\alpha}\). More precisely, in Theorem 1.3 they show that if \(\alpha>0\), \(\omega>\frac{\alpha^{2}}{N^{2}}\) and \(p\geq5\), then \(e^{i\omega t}\Phi_{0}^{\alpha}(x)\) is strongly unstable. Moreover, Theorem 1.4 shows that if \(\alpha<0\), \(p>5\), \(\omega>\frac{\alpha^{2}}{N^{2}}\), \(e^{i\omega t}\Phi_{0}^{\alpha}(x)\) is strongly unstable for all \(\omega\in\lbrack\omega_{1},\infty)\), where \(\omega_{1}=\omega_{1}(p,\alpha)\) can be computed from a given integral equation. In order to prove the above theorems the authors use the ideas of [\textit{N. Fukaya} and \textit{M. Ohta}, Osaka J. Math. 56, No. 4, 713--726 (2019; Zbl 1431.35172); \textit{M. Ohta}, São Paulo J. Math. Sci. 13, No. 2, 465--474 (2019; Zbl 1433.35368)]. The essential ingredients are the virial identity for the NLS-\(\delta\) equation on \(\Gamma\) and a novel variational technique applied to the standing wave solutions being minimizers of a specific variational problem.