Mountain Pass solutions for non-local elliptic operators ✩
Raffaella Servadei a,∗, Enrico Valdinoci b
a Dipartimento di Matematica, Università della Calabria, Ponte Pietro Bucci 31 B, 87036 Arcavacata di Rende, Cosenza, Italy
b Dipartimento di Matematica, Università di Milano, Via Cesare Saldini 50, 20133 Milano, Italy
article info abstract
Article history:
Received 27 September 2011
Available online 21 December 2011
Submitted by V. Radulescu
Keywords:
Mountain Pass Theorem
Variational techniques
Integrodifferential operators
Fractional Laplacian
The purpose of this paper is to study the existence of solutions for equations driven by
a non-local integrodifferential operator with homogeneous Dirichlet boundary conditions.
These equations have a variational structure and we find a non-trivial solution for them
using the Mountain Pass Theorem. To make the nonlinear methods work, some careful
analysis of the fractional spaces involved is necessary. We prove this result for a general
integrodifferential operator of fractional type and, as a particular case, we derive an
existence theorem for the fractional Laplacian, finding non-trivial solutions of the equation
(−)s
u = f (x, u) in Ω,
u = 0 in Rn Ω.
As far as we know, all these results are new.
© 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 887
2. Some preliminary results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 890
2.1. Preliminary estimates on the nonlinearity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 890
2.2. The functional analytic setting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 891
3. Mountain Pass solutions in a non-local framework: proof of Theorem 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 894
4. An equation driven by the fractional Laplacian: proof of Theorem 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 898
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 898
1. Introduction
One of the most celebrated applications of the Mountain Pass Theorem (see [1,5,6,8]) consists in the construction of
non-trivial solutions of semilinear equations of the type
−u = f (x, u) in Ω,
u = 0 on ∂Ω. (1.1)
✩ The first author was supported by the MIUR National Research Project Variational and Topological Methods in the Study of Nonlinear Phenomena, while the
second one by the ERC grant (Elliptic Pde’s and Symmetry of Interfaces and Layers for Odd Nonlinearities) and the FIRB project A&B (Analysis and Beyond).
* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: servadei@mat.unical.it (R. Servadei), valdinoci@mat.uniroma2.it (E. Valdinoci).
0022-247X/$ – see front matter © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jmaa.2011.12.032
888 R. Servadei, E. Valdinoci / J. Math. Anal. Appl. 389 (2012) 887–898
In this framework, the solutions are constructed with a variational method by a minimax procedure on the associated
energy functional.
We think that a natural question is whether or not these Mountain Pass techniques may be adapted to the fractional
analogue of Eq. (1.1), namely
(−)s
u = f (x, u) in Ω,
u = 0 in Rn Ω.
Here, s ∈ (0, 1) is fixed and (−)s is the fractional Laplace operator, which (up to normalization factors) may be defined as
−(−)s
u(x) = 1
2
Rn
u(x + y) + u(x − y) − 2u(x)
|y|
n+2s dy, x ∈ Rn. (1.2)
For instance, when s = 1/2, the above operator is the square root of (minus) the Laplacian (the minus sign is needed to
make the operator positive definite, see [4] and references therein for a basic introduction to the fractional Laplace operator).
Recently, a great attention has been focused on the study of fractional and non-local operators of elliptic type, both for
the pure mathematical research and in view of concrete real-world applications. This type of operators arises in a quite
natural way in many different contexts, such as, among the others, the thin obstacle problem, optimization, finance, phase
transitions, stratified materials, anomalous diffusion, crystal dislocation, soft thin films, semipermeable membranes, flame
propagation, conservation laws, ultra-relativistic limits of quantum mechanics, quasi-geostrophic flows, multiple scattering,
minimal surfaces, materials science and water waves.
The literature on non-local operators and on their applications is, therefore, very interesting and, up to now, quite large
(see, e.g., [4] f