Extremal functions for the anisotropic Sobolev inequalities (Q2467366)

Let \(p=(p_1,\dots,p_N)\) with \(p_i>1\), \(\sum_{i=1}^N \frac{1}{p_i}>1\), \(\max\{p_1,\dots,p_N\} <p^*=\frac{N} {\sum_{i=1}^N \frac{1}{p_i}-1}\). Let \(\mathcal D^{1,p}\) be the anisotropic Sobolev space \(\{u\in L^{p^*}(\mathbb R^N):| \frac{\partial u}{\partial x_i}| \in L^{p_i}(\mathbb R^N)\}\) equipped with the natural norm. The authors prove that the infimum \[ \inf_{u\in\mathcal D^{1,p},\| u\| _{L^{p^*}}=1} \left\{\sum_{i=1}^N \frac{1}{p_i} \left\| \frac{\partial u}{\partial x_i}\right\| _{L^{p_i}}^{p_i}\right\} \] is attained, and they show the existence of solutions \( u\in\mathcal D^{1,p}\), \(u\geq0\), \(u\not=0\), of the ``critical'' equation \[ -\sum_{i=1}^N \frac{\partial}{\partial x_i}\left(\left| \frac{\partial u}{\partial x_i}\right| ^{p_i-2} \frac{\partial u}{\partial x_i}\right)= | u| ^{p^*-2}u\text{ in } \mathbb R^N. \] Moreover, these solutions are in \(L^{\infty}(\mathbb R^{N})\) and lie outside a ball in \(L^{p^{*}}(\mathbb R^{N})\).