Berestycki-Lions conditions on ground state solutions for Kirchhoff-type problems with variable potentials

Abstract

By introducing some new tricks, we prove that the nonlinear problem of Kirchhoff-type \begin{equation*} \left\{ \begin{array}{ll} -\left(a+b\int_{\R^3}|\nabla u|^2\mathrm{d}x\right)\triangle u+V(x)u=f(u), & x\in \R^3; u\in H^1(\R^3), \end{array} \right. \end{equation*} admits two class of ground state solutions under the general "Berestycki-Lions assumptions" on the nonlinearity $f$ which are almost necessary conditions, as well as some weak assumptions on the potential $V$. Moreover, we also give a simple minimax characterization of the ground state energy. Our results improve and complement previous ones in the literature.