A note on a superlinear and periodic elliptic system in the whole space (Q652027)

The authors study a nonlinear elliptic system in Hamiltonian form: \[ \begin{aligned} -\Delta u + V(x) u = f(x,v) & \text{ in }\,\,\, {\mathbb R}^N, \\ -\Delta v + V(x) v = g(x,u) & \text{ in } \,\,\, {\mathbb R}^N ,\\ u(x) \to 0 , v(x) \to 0\,\,\, & \text{ as } \,\,\, | x | \to \infty, \end{aligned}\tag{ES} \] where \(N \geq 3\). Assumptions on \(V,f \) and \(g\) are as follows. \((V)\) \(V \in C({\mathbb R}^N, {\mathbb R}) \) is \(1\)-periodic in each \(x_i\) \((i=1,2,\ldots ,N)\) and \(V_0:= \min V >0\). \((H_0)\) \(f,g \in C({\mathbb R}^N,{\mathbb R})\) are \(1\)-periodic in each \(x_i\) \((i=1,2,\ldots ,N)\). \((H_1)\) \(f(x,t) =o(| t | )\), \(g(x,t)= o(| t | )\) uniformly in \(x\) as \(| t | \to 0\). \((H_2)\) There exists a constant \(C>0\) such that \(| f(x,t) | \leq C(1+ | t | ^p) \) and \(| g(x,t) | \leq C(1+| t | ^q)\) for all \((x,t)\), where \(p,q>1\) satisfy \(1/(p+1) +1/(q+1)> 1-2/N\). \((H_3)\) \(F(x,t)/t^2 \to \infty \) and \(G(x,t) /t^2 \to \infty \) uniformly in \(x\) as \(| t | \to \infty \) where \(F(x,t)\) and \(G(x,t)\) are the primitives of \(f(x,t)\) and \(g(x,t)\), respectively. \((H_4)\) \(t \mapsto f(x,t)/t\) and \(t \mapsto g(x,t)/t\) are strictly increasing on \({\mathbb R}\setminus \{0\}\). Two solutions \((u_1,v_1)\) and \((u_2,v_2)\) for (ES) are said to be geometrically distinct if \(u_1(x+a) \neq u_2(x)\) or \(v_1(x+a)\neq v_2(x)\) for all \(a \in {\mathbb Z}^N\). The authors prove the main theorem \textbf{Theorem 1.1}. Assume that the conditions \((V)\) and \((H_1)\)--\((H_4)\) hold. Then the problem (ES) has a ground state solution. If additionally \(f(x,t)\) and \(g(x,t)\) are odd in \(t\), then (ES) has infinitely many geometrically distinct solutions. For the proof, the generalized Nehari manifold is used to construct a natural constrained problem. The crucial point of their arguments is to use the variational method for the proper functional setting by considering fractional powers of the Schrödinger operator.