Characterization of ground-states for a system of \(M\) coupled semilinear Schrödinger equations and applications (Q898558)

In this paper a ground state \(U=(u_1, \ldots, u_M)\in (H^1(\mathbb{R}^N))^M\) of the system \[ \Delta u_i - u_i+\sum^M_{j=1}k_{ij}| u_j| ^{p+1}| u_i|^{p-1}u_i=0,\qquad i=1, \dots, M, \] is a solution that minimizes the functional \[ S (U)=\frac{1}{2}\sum^M_{i=1}\int_{\mathbb{R}^N}(|\nabla u_i|^2+| u_i|^2)-\frac{1}{2p+2}\sum^M_{i,j=1}k_{i,j}\int_{\mathbb{R}^N}| u_i|^{p+1}| u_j|^{p+1} \] amongst all solutions with at least one component \(u_i\neq0\). It is proved that a ground state exists if \(S(U)<0\) for some \(U\). The author also investigates the case when all components of a ground state are multiples of a scalar ground state, and when the \(u_i\) can be grouped into cooperating and competing components. As in the case \(M=1\) the results are applied to find the optimal constant for the vector-valued Gagliardo-Nirenberg inequality, and to study global existence, \(L^2\)-concentration phenomena and the blowup profile for the evolution system in the \(L^2\)-critical power case. Reviewer's remark: The condition \(p<4/(N-2)\) if \(N\geq 3\) in the paper has to be replaced by \(p<2/(N-2)\).