The Pohozaev identity for the Spectral Fractional Laplacian

Abstract

In this paper, we prove a Pohozaev identity for the Spectral Fractional Laplacian (SFL). This identity allows us to establish non-existence results for the semilinear Dirichlet problem $(-\Delta|_{\Omega})^su = f(u)$ in star-shaped domains. The first such identity for non-local operators was established by Ros-Oton and Serra in 2014 for the Restricted Fractional Laplacian (RFL). However, the SFL differs fundamentally from the RFL, and the integration by parts strategy of Ros-Oton and Serra cannot be applied. Instead, we develop a novel spectral approach that exploits the underlying quadratic structure. Our main result expresses the identity as a Schur product of the classical Pohozaev quadratic form and a transition matrix that depends on the eigenvalues of the Laplacian and the fractional exponent.