Positive solutions of asymptotically linear equations via Pohozaev manifold (Q477031)

The authors study the Schrödinger equation \(-\Delta u+\lambda u=a(x)f(u)\) in \(\mathbb{R}^N\), where \(N\geq 3\), \(\lambda>0\), \(a\in C^2(\mathbb{R}^N,\mathbb{R}_+)\) is a positive function satisfying certain structure conditions, and \(f\in C(\mathbb{R}_+,\mathbb{R}_+)\) is a positive function which is asymptotically linear at infinity, superlinear at \(0\) and satisfies the following conditions: {\parindent=6mm \begin{itemize}\item[(1)] there exists \(D\geq 1\) such that: \(0<\frac{1}{2}f(s)s-\int_0^sf(\tau)d\tau\leq D( \frac{1}{2}f(t)t-\int_0^tf(\tau)d\tau)\), for all \(t>0\) and \(s\in (0,t];\) \item[(2)] \(\lim_{s\rightarrow +\infty}{(\frac{1}{2}f(s)s-\int_0^sf(\tau)d\tau)=+\infty}.\) \end{itemize}} Under the above conditions, the authors prove that the Pohozaev manifold \(\mathcal{P}\) associated to the above equation is a natural constraint for this latter, that is any critical point of the restriction to \(\mathcal{P}\) of energy functional \(I\) is a critical point of \(I\). At the same time, the authors show that the infimum of \(I\) on \(\mathcal{P}\) is not a critical level and so it is never achieved. Then, the authors look for critical points of \(I\) by using a linking argument which involves the submanifold of all functions of \(\mathcal{P}\) having \textit{barycenter} identically zero. As a result, the authors prove the existence of a positive solution in \(H^1(\mathbb{R}^N)\) for the above equation under the additional assumption that \(\sup_{x\in \mathbb{R}^N}| \lim_{|y|\rightarrow+\infty}a(y)-a(x)|\) is sufficiently small.