A nonlinear elliptic equation with singular potential and applications to nonlinear field equations (Q2466989)

The authors study existence of nontrivial cylindrical solutions for the semilinear singular elliptic problem \[ -\Delta u + \frac{u}{| y| ^2} = f(u),\qquad u\in H^1({\mathbb{R}}^N),\qquad u\geq 0, \] where \((y,z)\in {\mathbb R}^k\times {\mathbb R}^{N-k}\), \(N>k\geq 2\), and \(f\colon {\mathbb R}\to {\mathbb R}\) is a continuous function with \(f(0)=0\). The following additional assumptions concerning the function \(f\) are made: {\parindent=7mm \begin{itemize}\item[(1)]There exist \(M,p,q>0\) with \(2<p<2N/(N-2)<q\) such that \(| f(t)| \leq M| t| ^{p-1}\) for \(| t| \geq 1\), and \(| f(t)| \leq M| t| ^{q-1}\) for \(| t| \leq 1\); \item[(2)]For \(t\leq 0\), \(f(t)\) is nonnegative; \item[(3)]There exits \(\sigma >2\) such that \(F(t) \leq f(t) t/\sigma\) for all \(t\in {\mathbb R}\), where \(F(t)=\int_0^t f(s)\,ds\); \item[(4)]There exists \(t_*\in {\mathbb R}\) such that \(F(t_*)>0\). \end{itemize}} The authors show that for a function \(f\) satisfying conditions (1)--(4), the above problem has a nontrivial weak solution \(u\geq 0\) such that \[ \limsup_{| x| \to\infty} | x| ^\nu u(x) <\infty \] for any \(\nu <(N-2+\sqrt{(N-2)^2+4})/2\). Furthermore, applications of this result to the problem of finding solitary waves for nonlinear evolution equations of the Schrödinger or Klein--Gordon type are given.