On a class of nonlinear Schrödinger equations in \(\mathbb R^2\) involving critical growth (Q5945080)

This paper deals with the Schrödinger type equation \(-\varepsilon^2\Delta u +V(x)u=f(u)\) in \({\mathbb R}^2\), where \(\varepsilon >0\) is a small parameter. The potential \(V\) is assumed to be positive and bounded away from zero, while \(f(u)\) behaves like \(\exp (\alpha u^2)\) when \(u\rightarrow +\infty\). It is also supposed that there exists a bounded domain \(\Omega\subset{\mathbb R}^2\) such that \(\inf_\Omega V<\min_{\partial\Omega}V\). The main result of the paper establishes the existence of solutions concentrating around a local minima not necessarily nondegenerate of \(V\), when \(\varepsilon\) tends to 0. More precisely, there exists \(\varepsilon_0>0\) such that, for any \(\varepsilon\in (0,\varepsilon_0)\), the above equation has at least a positive solution \(u_\varepsilon \in C^2({\mathbb R}^2)\cap H^1({\mathbb R}^2)\) with the following properties: (i) \(u_\varepsilon\) has at most one local maximum \(x_\varepsilon\); (ii) \(\lim_{\varepsilon\rightarrow 0^+} V(x_\varepsilon )=\inf_\Omega V\); (iii) there exist positive constants \(C\) and \(\zeta\) such that \(u_\varepsilon (x)\leq C\exp (-\zeta | (x-x_\varepsilon)/\varepsilon| )\), for any \(x\in\Omega\). The proof is based on variational arguments applied to the associated energy functional, combined with the Trudinger-Moser inequality which plays a basic role in the treatment of two-dimensional elliptic problems.