Uniqueness and Nondegeneracy of positive solutions to Kirchhoff equations and its applications in singular perturbation problems

Abstract

In the present paper, we establish the uniqueness and nondegeneracy of positive energy solutions to the Kirchhoff equation \begin{eqnarray*} -\left(a+b\int_{\mathbb{R}^{3}}|\nabla u|^{2}\right)\Delta u+u=|u|^{p-1}u & & \text{in }\mathbb{R}^{3}, \end{eqnarray*} where $a,b>0$, $1<p<5$ are constants. Then, as applications, we derive the existence and local uniqueness of solutions to the perturbed Kirchhoff problem \begin{eqnarray*} -\left(\epsilon^2a+\epsilon b\int_{\mathbb{R}^{3}}|\nabla u|^{2}\right)\Delta u+V(x)u=|u|^{p-1}u & & \text{in }\mathbb{R}^{3} \end{eqnarray*} for $\epsilon>0$ sufficiently small, under some mild assumptions on the potential function $V:\mathbb{R}^3\to \mathbb{R}$. The existence result is obtained by applying the Lyapunov-Schmidt reduction method. It seems to be the first time to study singularly perturbed Kirchhoff problems by reduction method, as all the previous results were obtained by various variational methods. Another advantage of this approach is that it gives a unified proof to the perturbation problem for all $p\in (1,5)$, which is quite different from using variational methods in the literature. The local uniqueness result is totally new. It is obtained by using a type of local Pohozaev identity, which is developed quite recently by Deng, Lin and Yan in their work "On the prescribed scalar curvature problem in $\mathbb{R}^N$, local uniqueness and periodicity." (see J. Math. Pures Appl. (9) {\bf 104}(2015), 1013-1044).