On the lack of compactness in the 2D critical Sobolev embedding (Q610756)

Denote by \(\mathcal L\) the Orlicz space \(L^\Phi(\mathbb R^2)\) endowed by the norm \[ \|u\|_{L^\Phi}= \inf \Big\{\lambda>0; \int_{\mathbb R^2} \Phi\big(\frac{|u(x)|}{\lambda}\big) \,dx \leq \kappa\Big\}, \] where \(\Phi(s)=e^{s^2}-1\) and \[ \kappa=\sup_{\|u\|_{H^1}\leq 1} \int_{\mathbb R^2} \Big(e^{4\pi |u|^2} -1\Big) \, dx. \] A sequence \(\mathbf {\alpha}:=(\alpha_n)\) of positive real numbers satisfying \(\alpha_n \rightarrow \infty\) is called a scale. Two scales \(\mathbf {\alpha}\) and \(\mathbf {\beta}\) are said to be orthogonal if \(|\log(\beta_n/\alpha_n)|\rightarrow\infty\). The set of profiles is \(\mathcal P:= \{\psi \in L^2(\mathbb R, e^{-2s} \, ds); \psi'\in L^2(\mathbb R), \psi_{|(-\infty, 0]}=0\}\). The first main result of the paper concerns the characterization of the lack of compactness of the embedding \(H^1_{rad}(\mathbb R^2) \hookrightarrow \mathcal L\) in terms of an asymptotic decomposition and it reads as follows. Let \((u_n)\) be a bounded sequence in \(H^1_{rad}(\mathbb R^2)\) such that \(u_n\rightharpoonup 0\), \(\limsup_{n\rightarrow \infty} \|u_n\|_{\mathcal L}=A_0>0\), and \(\lim_{R\to\infty}\limsup_{n\rightarrow \infty} \int_{|x|>R} |u_n|^2 \, dx=0\). Then there exists a sequence \(\mathbf {\alpha}^{(j)}\) of pairwise orthogonal scales and a sequence of profiles \((\phi^{(j)})\) in \(\mathcal P\) such that, up to a subsequence extraction, we have for all \(\ell\geq1\), \[ u_n(x)=\sum^{\ell}_{j=1}\sqrt{\frac{\alpha_n^{(j)}}{2\pi}}\psi^{(j)}\left(\frac{-\log |x|}{\alpha_n^{(j)}}\right)+r_n^{(\ell)}(x), \quad \limsup_{n\to\infty}\|r_n^{(\ell)}\|_{\mathcal L} \overset{\ell\to\infty}{\longrightarrow} 0. \] Moreover, \[ \|\nabla u_n\|^2_{L^2}=\sum^{\ell}_{j=1}\|\psi^{(j)'}\|^2_{L^2}+\|\nabla r^{(\ell)}_n\|^2_{L^2}+o(1),\quad n\rightarrow\infty. \] The second main result concerns a qualitative study of the solutions of the two-dimensional nonlinear Klein-Gordon wave equation involving the exponential growth given by the function \( f(u)=u(e^{4\pi u^2}-1). \)