Ground State Solutions for p-Fractional Choquard-Kirchhoff Equations Involving Electromagnetic Fields and Critical Nonlinearity ()

1. Introduction
We consider the existence of ground state solutions for following p-fractional Choquard-Kirchhoff equations with electromagnetic fields and critical growth
(1.1)
where
,
,
is the Riesz potential.
denotes the p-fractional magnetic operator with
,
,
and
.
and
are the electric and magnetic potentials, respectively. h is a continuous function satisfying some conditions.
When
, the fractional magnetic Laplacian
, up to normalization constants, which is defined on smooth functions u as
(1.2)
Here,
denotes the ball of
centered at
and of radius
. This operator was defined by d’Avenia and Squassina [1], and it can be considered as the fractional counterpart of the magnetic Laplacian
(1.3)
which plays a fundamental role in quantum mechanics in the description of the dynamics of the particle in a non-relativistic setting. In this context, the curl of A represents magnetic field acting on a charged particle. Motivated by this fact, many authors dealt with the existence of nontrivial solutions of the Schrödinger equations with magnetic fields.
For more details on fractional magnetic operators, we refer to d’Avenia and Squassina [1], and for the physical background, we can refer to previous studies [2] and [3]. This paper was inspired by previous works concerning the magnetic Schrödinger equations. Next, let us mention some enlightening works related to the problem (1.1). Recently, a great attention has been devoted to the study of the following fractional magnetic Schrödinger equation
(1.4)
For instance, Ambrosio and d’Avenia established with the existence and multiplicity of solutions to (1.4) for small
, when f has a subcritical growth and the potential V satisfies some global conditions, by applying variational methods and Ljusternick-Schnirelmann theory in [4]. By employing the fractional version of the concentration compactness principle and variational methods, Liang et al., in [5], studied the existence and multiplicity of solutions for the fractional Schrödinger-Kirchhoff equations with external magnetic operator and critical nonlinearity
(1.5)
Others related fractional Schrödinger-Kirchhoff equations can be seen in [6] - [11]. Moreover, as mentioned above, if the magnetic field
, the operator
can be reduced to the p-fractional Laplacian operator
, up to normalization constants, which is defined as
(1.6)
where
. There are also some interesting results that are obtained by using some different approaches under various hypotheses on the potential and the nonlinearity. Xiang et al. [12] obtained weak solutions for the following Kirchhoff type problem involving the fractional p-Laplacian by using the mountain pass theorem
(1.7)
Iannizzotto et al. [13] studied a class of quasilinear nonlocal problems involving the fractional p-Laplacian and obtained the existence and multiplicity of solutions by Morse theory. In [14], the authors investigated the existence of weak solutions for a perturbed nonlinear elliptic equation driven by the fractional p-Laplacian operator by variational methods.
For the Choquard equation, we refer to [15], Shen et al. considered the following Choquard equation, and proved that the existence of ground states for it by variational methods
(1.8)
And in [16], by applying the variational methods, Ma and Zhang obtained the existence and multiplicity of weak solutions, considering the following fractional Choquard equation with critical nonlinearity
(1.9)
And Li et al. [17] obtained a ground state solution for fractional Choquard equation involving upper critical exponent. For others related, we can see [18] - [24]. It is worth mentioning that Li et al., in [25], established that the following fractional equation has a ground state solution by the Nehari methods, when
is quite large
(1.10)
We borrowed some brilliant ideas from them, while the structure of Choquard-Kirchhoff equations and appearance of the magnetic fields, such that our results are different from theirs and extend their results in some degree.
Inspired by the above works, in this paper, we focus our attention on the existence of ground state solutions to (1.1). To our best knowledge, there are a few results in the literature to study the p-fractional Choquard-Kirchhoff equations with electromagnetic fields and critical growth. Some difficulties arise when dealing with this problem, the main difficulty origins from the strongly nonlocality in the sense that the leading operator takes care of the behavior of the solutions in the whole space. Indeed, the appearance of the magnetic fields and the existence of criticality also bring additional difficulties into the study of our problem, such as the effects of the magnetic fields on the linear spectral sets and on the structure of solutions, and the possible interactions between the magnetic fields and the linear potentials. Therefore, we need to take more considerations to overcome the difficulties induced by these new traits.
The main goal of this paper is to investigate the existence of ground state solutions for the problem (1.1), when
is sufficiently large,
, under assumptions (V1) - (V2) on the potential V and h is a superlinear but subcritical function satisfying the following conditions. Let K be the class of functions
such that for every
, the set
has a finite Lebesgue measure. We shall assume that V satisfies
(V1)
and
.
(V2) There exists a function
, which is 1-periodic in
, such that
and
for all
.
And h satisfies the assumptions:
(h1)
and there exists
such that
for all
, where C is a positive constant.
(h2)
uniformly in
as
.
(h3)
for all
and
, where
.
(h4)
for all
.
(h5) There exists a function
, which is 1-periodic in
, such that
1)
;
2)
, where
and q is given by (h1);
3)
for all
, and
, where
;
4)
for all
.
The main result of this paper can be summarized as follows:
Theorem 1.1. Let
,
,
. Assume that
, V satisfies (V1) - (V2) and h satisfies (h1) - (h5). Then there exists
such that for each
, problem (1.1) possesses a positive ground state solution.
2. Preliminaries
Let
,
. The magnetic Gagliardo seminorm is defined by
and
is denoted by
endowed with the norm
In view of the V, the subspace of
is defined by
where the norm
On account of (V1) - (V2), we know that the norms
and
are equivalent. In addition, the best constant of Hardy-Littlehood-Sobolev inequality is
(2.1)
where
is Gagliardo seminorm defined in
. We will show the existence of ground solutions of (1.1) by searching for the critical points of energy functional associated to (1.1)
The Nehari manifolds can be defined on X as follows:
and
where
Now we give the definition of weak solutions for problem (1.1).
Lemma 2.1. (Diamagnetic inequality) For every
, it holds
. More precisely,
Proof. It follows from Pointwise Diamagnetic inequality in [1] that
which implies the conclusion holds.
Lemma 2.2. (Magnetic Sobolev embeddings) Let
and
,
, then the embedding
↪
is continuous for
and is locally compact for
.
Proof. In view of Theorem 6.7 in [24], we know that the embedding
↪
is continuous for
, that is, there exists a constant
such that
and similar to the argument of Lemma 3.3 in [1], since Pointwise Diamagnetic inequality, we have
Consequently,
Then, by interpolation the assertion immediately follows. For the compact embedding, note that the embedding
↪
is continuous, the assertion follows by the Corollary 7.2 [26].
Lemma 2.3. [27] Let
and
with
.
Assume that
and
. Then there exists a sharp constant
independent of
and
such that
3. Proof of Main Results
Lemma 3.1. For each
,
, we have
1) Set
. Then there exists a unique
such that
for
and
for
. Moreover,
if and only if
.
2) Set
. Then there exists a unique
such that
for
and
for
. Moreover,
if and only if
.
Proof. 1) For any
, by (h1) and (h2), there exists
such that
(3.1)
and
(3.2)
In view of Lemma 2.2 and Lemma 2.3, we get
(3.3)
Hence, for small
and
, it follows from (3.2) and (3.3) that
and due to (3.1), we have
Furthermore, by means of (h4), we obtain that
as
. Therefore,
has a maximum and then there exists
such that
and
for
. We claim that
for all
. Indeed, if the conclusion is false, then, from the above arguments, there exists a
such that
and
. Nevertheless, (h3) implies that
which is a contradiction. Thereupon, the one conclusion of (1) has been proved, we can obtain the other one by the fact that
This completes the proof of (1).
2) Similar to the proof of (1), we can obtain that (2) holds.
Lemma 3.2. For each
, we have the following results.
1) There exists
such that
for each
Moreover, for each compact subset
, there exsits
such that
for all
.
2) There exists
such that
where
.
Proof. 1) For
, owing to Lemma 3.1 (1), there exists
such that
. Also, by (3.1) and (3.3), we have
which implies that there exists
such that
for all
. Assume that there exists
such that
as
. Since
is compact, there exists
such that
in X. Set
Indeed, we have
(3.4)
It follows from (3.4) and (h4) that
as
. However, by (h3), we have
a contradiction. Hence the conclusion holds.
2) For
, and small
, it follows from (3.2) and (3.3) that
for small
. Furthermore, for each
, there exists
such that
. Then we have
which implies that
The proof is completed.
It follows from [28] that we have the following lemma.
Lemma 3.3. The mapping
is a homeomorphism between
and
, and the inverse of I is given by
. Considering the functional
given by
then the lemma follows.
Lemma 3.4. 1) If
is a Palais-Smale sequence for
, then
is a Palais-Smale sequence for J. If
is a bounded Palais-Smale sequence for J, then
is a Palais-Smale sequence for
.
2)
is a critical point of
if and only if
is a nontrivial critical point of J. Moreover, the corresponding values of
and J coincide and
.
3) A minimizer of J on
is a ground state solution of (1.1).
Similar to the argument of Lemma 2.6 in [8], the results as follows
Lemma 3.5. If
satisfies
in X and
is bounded. Then
(3.5)
and
(3.6)
also
(3.7)
Lemma 3.6. There exists
such that
for all
.
Proof. Assume that the conclusion is not true. Then there exists a sequence
with
such that
. Take
, by Lemma 3.1 (1), there exists a unique
such that
Since (h4), we have
which means that
is bounded. Therefore, up to a subsequence, and there exists
such that
as
. Suppose
. In view of (h4), one has
However, we know that
which is a contradiction. Thereupon, we get
. And it follows from (h4) that
as
. Hence,
a contradiction. As a result, there exists
such that
for all
. The proof is completed.
Proof of Theorem 1.1. In virtue of Lemma 3.4 (3), we know that
is achieved. For
. let
be a minimizing sequence satisfying
Thanks to the Ekeland variational principle, we assume that
in
. Set
. By Lemma 3.4 (1), we have
and
in
. Thus, by virtue of (h3), we get
which implies
is bounded in X. Hence, there exists a subsequence, still denoted by
, and
. Then we have
Thereupon,
. The next, we prove it by case.
If
. we know that
and
. It follows from Fatou’s Lemma, the weakly lower semi-continuity of the norm and (h3) that
Consequently, we get
.
In the following, we consider the case for
. On account of the concentration-compactness principle by Lions, we know that two cases may happen:
1): Vanishing, that is,
.
2): Nonvanishing, that is, there exists a sequence
and a constant
such that
(3.8)
Assume that (1) occurs. In view of Lemma 1.21 in [29], we get
in
for
. Thus, by means of (3.1) and (3.2), we have
(3.9)
Consequently,
Suppose
. Then
. If
, in virtue of (2.1), we get
Hence,
. Then we have either
or
.
If
, we have
, which contradicts with Lemma 3.6. When
, it follows from
and (3.9) that
which also contradicts with Lemma 3.6. Therefore, nonvanishing occurs. Without loss of generality, we may suppose
. Let
. Up to a subsequence, then there exists
such that
in X,
in
for
, and
a.e. on
. Due to (3.8), we know that
.
The next job is to prove that
. For all
, set
. Owing to Lemma 3.5, we know that
and
Hence we have
Consequently,
. In addition, it follows from the periodicity of
and
with regard to the variable x and
that
which means that
. Therefore, as previous arguments we can conclude that
.
What follows is to prove
. In fact, it follows from the boundedness of
and Lemma 3.5 that
and
also
Thereupon,
By the periodicity of
and
in the variable x again, (3) in (h5), and it follows from the weakly lower semi-continuity of the norm and Fatou’s Lemma that
Finally, we argue that
. In virtue of
and
, we get
. Therefore, we can deduce that the conclusion holds from Lemma 3.1 (2). It follows from
and Lemma 3.1 (1) that there exists
such that
. Then, we have
which means that
.
In summary,
is achieved. Moreover, by Lemma 3.4 (3), the corresponding minimizer is a ground state solution of (1.1). Then, we complete the proof of Theorem 1.1.