Existence and decays of solutions for fractional Schr\"{o}dinger equations with decaying potentials

Abstract

We revisit the following fractional Schr\"{o}dinger equation \begin{align}\label{1a} \varepsilon^{2s}(-\Delta)^su +Vu=u^{p-1},\,\,\,u>0,\ \ \ \mathrm{in}\ \R^N, \end{align} where $\varepsilon>0$ is a small parameter, $(-\Delta)^s$ denotes the fractional Laplacian, $s\in(0,1)$, $p\in (2, 2_s^*)$, $2_s^*=\frac {2N}{N-2s}$, $N>2s$, $V\in C\big(\R^N, [0, +\infty)\big)$ is a potential. Under various decay assumptions on $V$, we introduce a uniform penalization argument combined with a comparison principle and iteration process to detect an explicit threshold value $p_*$, such that the above problem admits positive concentration solutions if $p\in (p_*, \,2_s^*)$, while it has no positive weak solutions for $p\in (2,\,p_*)$ if $p_*>2$, where the threshold $p_*\in [2, 2^*_s)$ can be characterized explicitly by \begin{equation*}\label{qdj111} p_*=\left\{\begin{array}{l} 2+\frac {2s}{N-2s} \ \ \ \text { if } \lim\limits_{|x| \to \infty} (1+|x|^{2s})V(x)=0,\vspace{1mm} 2+\frac {\omega}{N+2s-\omega} \text { if } 0<\inf (1+|x|^\omega)V(x)\le \sup (1+|x|^\omega)V(x)< \infty \text { for some } \omega \in [0, 2s],\vspace{1mm} 2 \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \text { if } \inf V(x)\log(e+|x|^2)>0. \end{array}\right. \end{equation*} Moreover, corresponding to the various decay assumptions of $V(x)$, we obtain the decay properties of the solutions at infinity.