Concentration of solutions for fractional double-phase problems: critical and supercritical cases (Q2232181)

In the present work, the following equation is analyzed: \[ \begin{cases} (-\Delta)_p^s u+(-\Delta)_q^2 u+V(\varepsilon u)(|u|^{p-2}u+|u|^{q-2}u) =h(u)+|u|^{r-2}u & \text{ in } \mathbb{R}^N,\\ u\in W^{s,p}(\mathbb{R}^N)\cap W^{s,q}(\mathbb{R}^N),\ u>0, & \text{ in } \mathbb{R}^N, \end{cases} \tag{1} \] where \(\varepsilon>0\), \(0<s<1\), \(2\le p<q<N/s\), \((-\Delta)_t^s\) is the fractional \(t\)-Laplace operator, while \(V\in C(\mathbb{R}^N,\mathbb{R})\) and \(h\in C(\mathbb{R},\mathbb{R})\). The power \(r\) can be both critical (\(q_s^*:=qN/(N-sq)\)) or supercritical (\(\ge q_s^*\)). By using variational and topological methods, multiplicity of solutions and concentration properties are established. Equation (1) is related to double phase problems and the following features, which are described in Session 1, give a good overview of the work: \begin{itemize} \item[1.] the presence of several nonlocal operators with different growth, which generates a double phase associated energy; \item[2.] the reaction combines the multiple effects generated by a subcritical term and a critical/supercritical nonlinearity; \item[3.] the potential describing the absorption term satisfies a local condition and there is no information on the behavior of the potential at infinity; \item[4.] the main concentrate properties create a bridge between the global maximum point of the solution and the global minimum of the potential; \item[5.] the analysis combines the nonlocal nature of the fractional \((p,q)\)-operator with the local perturbation in the absorption term. \end{itemize} For the critical case the main result, which is Theorem 1, shows multiplicity of solutions according to topological properties (category) of the set of global minima of \(V\). Here \(h=\lambda f\), and \(\lambda\) is large. The supercritical case is treated when \(h\) is a power and a parameter \(\eta\) is added on the supercritical term. The main result is Theorem 2, which is similar to the previous one, however, \(\eta\) has to be small. The concentration result is as in item 4.