On a fractional harmonic oscillator: existence and inexistence of solution, regularity and decay properties

Abstract

Under simple hypotheses on the nonlinearity $f$, we consider the fractional harmonic operator problem \begin{equation}\label{abstr}\sqrt{-\Delta+|x|^2}\,u=f(x,u)\ \ \textrm{in }\ \mathbb{R}^N\end{equation} or, since we work in the extension setting $\mathbb{R}^{N+1}_+$, $$\left\{\begin{aligned} -\Delta v +|x|^2v&=0, &&\mbox{in} \ \mathbb{R}^{N+1}_+,\\ -\displaystyle\frac{\partial v}{\partial x}(x,0)&=f(x,v(x,0)) &&\mbox{on} \ \mathbb{R}^{N}\cong\partial \mathbb{R}^{N+1}_+.\end{aligned}\right.$$ Defining the space $$\mathcal{H}(\mathbb{R}^{N+1}_+)=\left\{v\in H^1(\mathbb{R}^{N+1}_+): \iint_{\mathbb{R}^{N+1}_+}\left[|\nabla v|^2+|x|^2v^2\right]dx dy<\infty\right\},$$ we prove that the embedding $$\mathcal{H}(\mathbb{R}^{N+1}_+)\hookrightarrow L^{q}(\mathbb{R}^N)$$ is compact. We also obtain a Pohozaev-type identity for this problem, show that in the case $f(x,u)=|u|^{p^*-2}u$ the problem has no non-trivial solution, compare the extremal attached to this problem with the one of the space $H^1(\mathbb{R}^{N+1}_+)$, prove that the solution $u$ of our problem belongs to $L^p(\mathbb{R}^N)$ for all $p\in [2,\infty]$ and satisfy the polynomial decay $|u(x)|\leq C/|x|$ for any $|x|>M$. Finally, we prove the existence of a solution to a superlinear critical problem in the case $f(x,u)=|u|^{2^*-2}u+\lambda |u|^{q-1}$, $1<q<2^*-1$.