Abstract
In this paper, we mainly study the p-Kirchhoff type equations with logarithmic nonlinear terms and critical growth: where is a bounded domain with a smooth boundary, , and both and are positive integers. By using the Nehari manifold and the Mountain Pass Theorem without the Palais-Smale compactness condition, it was proved that the equation had at least one nontrivial solution under appropriate conditions. It addresses the challenges posed by the critical term, the Kirchhoff nonlocal term and the logarithmic nonlinear term. Additionally, it extends partial results of the Brézis–Nirenberg problem with logarithmic perturbation from p = 2 to more general p-Kirchhoff type problems.
Keywords:
p-Kirchhoff equation; logarithmic nonlinearity; critical exponent; Nehari manifold; nontrivial solution MSC:
35J92
1. Introduction
In this paper, we study the p-Kirchhoff problem
with a critical exponent and nonlinear logarithmic terms, where is the bounded smooth region, , and both and are positive integers, is the p-Laplace operator and is the Sobolev embedded critical exponent. : is a continuously increasing function, and satisfies the following assumptions:
M0: There exists and such that ;
M1: There exists and such that .
As natural science advances and real-world demands evolve, a fascinating variant of the Kirchhoff equation has emerged, stemming from the D’Alembert wave equation for a freely vibrating elastic string. The significance of wave equations with logarithmic sources spans nuclear physics, geophysics, and optics. Delving into the existence and properties of solutions to these equations is not only highly relevant but also holds immense potential for meaningful discoveries in these fields.
Obviously, problem (1) is closely related to the following p-Laplace equation:
where , . In 1987, García Azorero and Peral Alonso in [1] first proved the existence and multiplicity of the solution of Equation (2) by using the Minimax Principle under the appropriate assumption of , , . Specifically, utilizing the solution of Equation (2) and the Concentration Compactness Principle, the following equations with critical terms were also studied in [1]:
where and the following research results have been obtained: when , and , , where is the first eigenvalue of the problem, Equation (3) has a solution; when , for all , Equation (3) has a solution. However, when , the problem becomes challenging. In general domains (non-spherical), the issue of studying remains open. In 1991, García Azorero and Peral Alonso addressed Equation (3) in [2] using Critical Point Theory. They demonstrated not only the existence of solutions but also their multiplicity. Comparing their work with others reveals differences not only in methods but also in the parameter ranges of the solutions. Further results on Equation (3) can be found in references [3,4].
In addition, a large number of scholars have studied the Kirchhoff equation. Fruitful research results have been obtained. For example, Figueiredo in [5] studied the equation:
where is the bounded smooth region, , is a positive parameter, and are both continuous functions that satisfy the following assumption:
satisfies the Ambrosetti-Rabinowitz superlinear condition, that is, for some ,
The existence of the positive solution of Equation (4) and the asymptotic behavior of the solution are obtained by using the variational method, appropriate truncation parameters and prior estimation method under the assumption condition. Furthermore, Chen et al. in [6] studied the following equation:
where (if , then ; if , then ), and , are the weight functions. Using the Nehari manifold and fiber mapping, the authors investigated three cases: and , each under different parameter ranges. They successfully established the existence and multiplicity of positive solutions for problem (5). Detailed results are available in [6].
With the emergence of p-Kirchhoff operators in numerous equations, many scholars have extensively researched a class of p-Kirchhoff equations, yielding significant findings. For instance, Li and Niu in [7] explored nonlinear p-Kirchhoff type equations with critical growth:
where , and is a nonnegative function. Utilizing Ekeland’s variational principle, in conjunction with the Concentration Compactness Principle and the Mountain Pass Theorem, the author has demonstrated the existence of a solution to the equation under appropriate conditions in the whole space . Similarly, Chu and Sun in [8] studied the following Kirchhoff Dirichlet boundary value problem:
where and Through the application of the Concentration Compactness Principle, Ekeland’s variational principle and the strong maximum principle, the author proved the existence of at least one positive solution to Equation (7). Furthermore, the author employed the Mountain Pass Theorem to establish the existence of a second positive solution to this equation. For more research on p-Kirchhoff equations, see [9,10,11,12] and references therein.
In recent years, the scholarly community has increasingly directed its research focus towards a specific class of equations characterized by nonlinear logarithmic terms. Notably, Wei in [13] studied semilinear elliptic equations with nonlinear logarithmic terms:
where is the bounded smooth region, and . The author found that the existence of the solution of Equation (8) is closely related to the sign of . He proved the existence and multiplicity of solutions for , and is a sign-changing function by the Symmetric Mountain Pass Theorem and the standard logarithmic Sobolev inequality (refer to [14]). In [15], Tian also studied the multiple solutions of Equation (8) and obtained that Equation (8) has at least two nontrivial solutions under certain conditions by using the Nehari manifold and logarithmic Sobolev inequality. In addition, Ji et al. in [16] mainly studied the periodic problems and asymptotic states of semilinear heat equations and pseudo-parabolic equations with logarithmic sources, and obtained the existence and instability of positive periodic solutions of the equations. For more studies with logarithmic terms , interested scholars can refer to [17,18,19,20].
In particular, in 2022, Deng et al. in [21] studied the following equation:
where , . They proved the existence and nonexistence of positive solutions to Equation (9) as . That is, when , , the equation has a positive Mountain pass solution, which is also a ground state solution; when , , the equation has at least one positive solution; when , , there is no positive solution to the equation. Subsequently, in 2023, Li et al. in [22] studied the critical biharmonic elliptic problem with logarithm, and also obtained the existence and nonexistence of nontrivial solutions of the equation by using the Mountain Pass Lemma and truncation function methods.
The above research is carried out in the case of p-Laplacian operators with . When , some scholars also carried out research. For example, in [23], Li et al. studied the following p-Laplacian Kirchhoff type problem with nonlinear term:
and proved that the equation has a sign-changing solution by constrained variational method, topological theory and quantitative deformation principle. More papers with logarithmic terms can be found in [24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33]. While many of the studies cited in [24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33] have focused on equations within the fractional Sobolev space and most of the solutions obtained are sign-changing solutions. And most of the equations studied have either only the p-Laplacian Kirchhoff term or only the critical term.
Inspired by the above papers, we study Equation (1) with logarithmic terms, p-Kirchhoff terms and critical terms. There are two main difficulties encountered in the research process. First of all, the presence of a critical Sobolev exponent causes the lack of compactness of the embedding , which makes it impossible to use the variational method directly, so we use the Mountain Pass Theorem without compactness condition to study the equation. Secondly, logarithmic terms do not satisfy classical (AR) conditions, making it difficult to verify the boundedness of sequences, so we use some logarithmic inequalities and properties of logarithms to solve this problem.
The result of the existence of the solution is as follows.
Theorem 1.
If , , and
is satisfied, where , and is defined later, then Equation (1) has a nontrivial solution.
Remark 1.
and in Theorem 1 are the following sets:
2. Preliminaries
In this section, we would give some preliminaries, which are important in our proofs.
We first show some notations and definitions that will be used throughout the paper. In the following text, denotes the usual Lebesgue space, with norm ; denotes the usual Sobolev space, endowed with the norm ; is the volume of in ; denotes the area of the unit sphere surface in .
We use to denote the best embedding constant for continuous compact embedding from to and , i.e.,
In particular, is the best continuous embedding constant from to , i.e.,
denotes the first eigenvalue of the eigenvalue problem:
and
Definition 1.
If the following is true for all functions
then the function is called the weak solution of problem (1).
We define a modified energy functional corresponding to problem (1) as follows:
It can also be rewritten as
where . It is obvious that the energy functional is continuous in .
The purpose is to prove the existence of the weak solution of the equation, which is verified by the two commonly used tools of fiber mapping and the Nahari manifold. For arbitrary , we first consider the fiber mapping
Secondly, the Nahari manifold is introduced, i.e.,
where denotes the dual product of and , and is the dual space of . If is a nontrivial solution to problem (1), then .
Definition 2
( condition). Let be a Banach space, and . The function satisfies the condition if any sequence such that
has a convergent subsequence. Here, denotes the dual space of , and .
Lemma 1
(Brézis-lieb’s lemma in [34]). When , assuming that the sequence is a bounded sequence in and satisfies in , then
Lemma 2
(Lemma 2.3 of [22]). (1) For all , there holds that
We deduce that
(2) For all , there holds that
(3) For all , there exists a positive constant such that
Lemma 3.
(1)
Proof.
Obviously, it can be known by the sign-preserving property of integral
□
(2)
Proof.
From the hypothesis condition , we can know , , and
Since
We have
that is
□
Lemma 4.
(1) For all (
represents the set of positive integers), there holds that
,
where
is a combinatorial number;
(2) ;
Proof.
Let
Since
We deduce that
So
And because of , we have
□
(3) .
Proof.
From the Binomial Theorem, we have
Let we have
Since , then
□
3. The Existence of Nontrivial Solutions to Equation
Lemma 5.
If and , then functional satisfies the mountain pass geometry:
- (1)
- there exist such that for all ;
- (2)
- there exist such that and .
Proof.
According to the division of the set, there are two kinds of proof.
Case 1:
First, verify that condition (1) is satisfied. Using the logarithmic algorithm, we have
By Lemma 2 of (19), we obtain
which implies that .
Combining the definition of functional and the definition of the best embedding constant , we have
Let
Through direct calculation, we can see that takes the maximum value at and there is
Combined with , we have
Therefore, if we take and , then for all such that condition (1) holds.
Second, prove that condition (2) is true.
According to the definition of , for any given , we can obviously get . Using Lemma 3 of (1), it can be deduced that
Since , we derive that . This indicates that condition (2) holds: choose sufficiently large so that .
Case 2:
In a similar way, by direct calculation there are
Similarly, combining the definition of functional with the definition of the best embedding constant , we have
Let
Through simple calculation, we can see that obtains the maximum value at , and has
Combined with , we know
Therefore, if we take and , then condition (1) is true for all . The verification of condition (2) is similar to case 1 and will not be repeated.
□
Lemma 6.
Assume that , if sequence is a sequence of functional , then sequence must be bounded in for all .
Proof.
According to the sequence definition, that is
and the definition of functional , we obtain
and
By Lemma 3, (23) and (24), we have
Using Lemma 2 of (19), when is sufficiently large, we have
Combined with the above formulas, we can see that
So there exists a constant such that . This indicates that the sequence is bounded in . □
Lemma 7.
Let be the sequence bounded in
, and satisfies
as
, then
Proof.
From Lemma 2 of (19) and (21), we know for any we get
In particular, let us take , then . By definition of , we have
This shows that is bounded integrable in .
According to Brézis-lieb’s Lemma 1, we have
Using Lemma 2 of (3) with , we have
And since is embedded compactly in and , as , there is
so
□
Lemma 8.
If , , and is a sequence of , then there exists a such that , and is a nontrivial solution to Equation (1).
Proof.
Supposing sequence is sequence of functional . From Lemma 6, we know that sequence is bounded in , and we take a subsequence of , which is still denoted as . So there is such that
Since for any , there is as . Therefore, is a weak solution to the following equation:
From the above formula, it can be deduced
Suppose and , by (24) and (26), then we get
According to the Brézis-lieb’s Lemma 1, we can see
and
Due to embedded compactly in , we have
According to Lemma 7, we know
Similarly, according to the Brézis-lieb’s Lemma 1, we can see
Combined with formulas (27)–(31), we can get
In a similar way, using (23) and functional , we also get
We can assume that
then
Obviously . Suppose , then according to the Brézis-lieb’s Lemma 1, when is sufficiently large, we have
and
Therefore, the above formula indicates , which is in contradiction with .
From the definition of the best embedding constant , .
By (32), we get
If , then . By (33) and Lemma 3 of (2), we can see that there is a , which satisfies
From the above comes the contradiction, so the hypothesis is not valid. From all of this, we know that is impossible. This contradicts the assumption that . Therefore, we proved that and are non-trivial solutions of Equation (1). □
4. Proofs of the Main Results
The following needs to verify , from [22] of Lemma 3.6, we know that there exist such that . So, we can see that we only need to find the appropriate to make .
Step 1. Find the appropriate .
It can be seen from the literature [8] of p-Laplace equation:
If is a solution to Equation (36), then there exists such that
when , set , we have
and there are , where .
Step 2. Estimate
Lemma 9
(see [8]). Suppose and be a truncation function such that , , for any and
where is a normal constant and . Set , assuming, for any , then there is
Lemma 10.
If when , then
Proof.
Using and the properties of the cut-off function , we have
According to the definition of , and N-dimensional spherical coordinate transformation, we can see
Let
Set , it is obvious that is a positive integer, is odd and is even. On the basis of the Binomial Theorem, we have
which implies that
According to Lemma 4 of (2), we have
Hence, as , we get
By direct calculation, we know
So
□
Lemma 11.
If as , then
Proof.
Similar to Lemma 10, we have
Using logarithmic inequalities in Lemma 2 of (1), we deduce that
and we have
In addition, by a direct computation, we have
So, we have
and
Hence
□
Lemma 12.
If , , and
are satisfied, where and , then holds.
Proof.
Since , , where is the value given in Lemma 9, this indicates the existence of a , such that
According to the definition of fiber mapping, we have
And when is sufficiently small, the following shows that is bounded.
Taking the derivative of with respect to , we can get
With the help of assumptions , estimates and Lemma 2 of (2) take , we have
and according to , we get
By simple derivation, there are
The above formula shows that has an upper bound.
Similarly, we have
The above formula shows that has a lower bound. Therefore, is a bounded.
Suppose we take , set , and when is sufficiently small, there is a such that
Let
and by taking the derivative, we let
After calculation, we can see gets the maximum value at and
Combine the definition of and take , we know
So, we get
The last inequality of the above equation is based on the following facts. That is, by virtue of the boundedness of , we may as well set , and , where is a positive constant.
So, we have
In addition, because of , there is
and according to the and algorithm, we have then
- (1)
- If then ;
- (2)
- If then ;
- (3)
- .
We know
that is
In the same way, we have
that is
Therefore, when is sufficiently small, combining (45) and , we obtain
From the given assumptions, it is not difficult to find that when is sufficiently small, there exists a function such that
Therefore, we have completed the proof. □
5. Conclusions
In this section, we will use the knowledge of variational method, combined with the preparatory work of the third and fourth parts, summarize the proof process of Theorem 1, and fully show that the proof process of Theorem 1 is complete.
According to Lemma 9, Lemma 10, Lemma 11 and Lemma 12, we show that under the appropriate assumptions of Theorem 1 condition holds. And combined with Lemma 8, we obtain that Equation (1) has at least one nontrivial solution.
Author Contributions
Methodology Q.M.; writing—original draft preparation, L.C.; writing—review and editing, Q.M. and L.C.; supervision, Q.M. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
Funding
This project was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.11861078).
Data Availability Statement
The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.
Conflicts of Interest
The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.
References
- García Azorero, J.P.; Peral Alonso, I. Existence and non-uniqueness for the p-Laplacian. Commun. Partial Differ. Equ. 1987, 12, 1389–1430. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- García Azorero, J.P.; Peral Alonso, I. Multiplicity of solutions for elliptic problems with critical exponent or with a non-symmetric term. Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 1991, 323, 877–895. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- García Azorero, J.P.; Peral Alonso, I. Some results about the existence of a second positive solution in a quasilinear critical problem. Indiana Univ. Math. J. 1994, 43, 941–957. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Guedda, M.; Véron, L. Quasilinear elliptic equations involving critical Sobolev exponents. Nonlinear Anal. Theory Methods Appl. 1989, 13, 879–902. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Figueiredo, G.M. Existence of a positive solution for a Kirchhoff problem type with critical growth via truncation argument. J. Math. Anal. Appl. 2013, 401, 706–713. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Chen, C.; Kuo, Y.; Wu, T. The Nehari manifold for a Kirchhoff type problem involving sign-changing weight functions. J. Differ. Equ. 2011, 250, 1876–1908. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Li, G.; Niu, Y. The existence of nontrivial solutions for p-Kirchhoff type equations with critical exponent in RN. Sci. Sin. Math. 2019, 49, 139–160. (In Chinese) [Google Scholar]
- Chu, C.; Sun, J. Multiplicity of positive solutions for a class of p-Kirchhoff equation with critical exponent. Ann. Funct. Anal. 2020, 11, 1126–1140. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Alves, C.O.; El Hamidi, A. Nehari manifold and existence of positive solutions to a class of quasilinear problems. Nonlinear Anal. 2005, 60, 611–624. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Zhang, S. Multiple solutions of local superlinear p-Kirchhoff equations. J. Shandong Univ. (Sci. Ed.) 2014, 49, 61–68. [Google Scholar]
- Figueiredo, G.M.; Santos, J.R., Jr. Multiplicity of solutions for a Kirchhof equation with subcritical sor critical growth. Difer. Integral Equ. 2012, 25, 853–868. [Google Scholar]
- Liu, F.; Zhang, J.; Wang, S. Positive solution of a class of P-Kirchhoff equations. J. North Univ. China (Nat. Sci. Ed.) 2017, 38, 513–517. [Google Scholar]
- Wei, S. Two sequences of solutions for the semilinear elliptic equations with logarithmic nonlinearities. J. Differ. Equ. 2023, 343, 263–284. [Google Scholar]
- Leonard, G. Logarithmic Sobolev Inequalities. Am. J. Math. 1975, 97, 1061–1083. [Google Scholar]
- Tian, S. Multiple solutions for the semilinear elliptic equations with the sign-changing logarithmic nonlinearity. J. Math. Anal. Appl. 2017, 454, 816–828. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Ji, S.; Yin, J.; Cao, Y. Instability of positive periodic solutions for semilinear pseudo-parabolic equations with logarithmic nonlinearity. J. Differ. Equ. 2016, 261, 5446–5464. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Alvesand, C.O.; Ji, C. Existence and concentration of positive solutions for a logarithmic Schrödinger equation via penalization method. Calc. Var. Partial Differ. Equ. 2020, 59, 21. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Tanaka, K.; Zhang, C. Multi-bump solutions for logarithmic Schrödinger equations. Calc. Var. Partial Differ. Equ. 2017, 56, 33. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Alvesand, C.O.; de Morais Filho, D.C. Existence and concentration of positive solutions for a Schrödinger logarithmic equation. Z. Angew. Math. Phys. 2018, 69, 144. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Chen, H.; Tian, S. Initial boundary value problem for a class of semilinear pseudo-parabolic equations with logarithmic nonlinearity. J. Differ. Equ. 2015, 258, 4424–4442. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Deng, Y.; He, Q.; Pan, Y.; Zhong, X. The existence of positive solution for an elliptic problem with critical growth and logarithmic perturbation. Adv. Nonlinear Stud. 2022, 23, 20220049. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Li, Q.; Han, Y.; Wang, T. Existence and nonexistence of solutions to a critical biharmonic equation with logarithmic perturbation. J. Differ. Equ. 2023, 365, 1–3. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Li, Y.; Wang, D.; Zhang, J. Sign-changing solutions for a class of p-Laplacian Kirchhoff-type problem with logarithmic nonlinearity. AIMS Math. 2020, 5, 2100–2112. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Chen, S.; Tang, X. Ground state sign-changing solutions for elliptic equations with logarithmic nonlinearity. Acta Math. Hung. 2019, 157, 27–38. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Li, Y.; Liao, J. Multiple Solutions of a Class of semilinear elliptic equations with logarithm. J. China West Norm. Univ. (Nat. Sci. Ed.) 2024, 1–8. [Google Scholar]
- Shi, P.; Huang, Y. The existence of ground-state solutions for the fractional p-kirchhoff type equation with logarithmic nonlinearity. J. Sichuan Univ. Sci. Eng. (Natl. Sci. Ed.) 2021, 34, 89–94. [Google Scholar]
- Huang, H.; Shang, X. Existence of solutions for a class of fractional-order Kirchhoff type equations with logarithmic nonlinear terms. J. Nanjing Norm. Univ. (Nat. Sci. Ed.) 2023, 46, 24–27. [Google Scholar]
- Bouizem, Y.; Boulaaras, S.; Djebbar, B. Some existence results for an elliptic equation of Kirchhoff-type with changing sign data and a logarithmic nonlinearity. Math. Methods Appl. Sci. 2019, 42, 2465–2474. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Duan, B.; Wang, S.; Guo, Z. Multisolvability of p-Kirchhoff type equations with logarithmic nonlinearity. J. North Univ. China Nat. Sci. Ed. 2019, 40, 385–389. [Google Scholar]
- Liang, S.; Rădulescu, V.D. Least-energy nodal solutions of critical Kirchhoff problems with logarithmic nonlinearity. Anal. Math. Phys. 2020, 10, 45. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Jian, H.; Feng, S.; Wang, L. Sign-changing solutions of critical quasilinear Kirchhoff-Schrödinger-Poisson system with logarithmic nonlinearity. AIMS Math. 2023, 8, 8580–8609. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Feng, S.; Wang, L.; Huang, L. Least energy sign-changing solutions of fractional Kirchhoff–Schrödinger–Poisson system with critical and logarithmic nonlinearity. Complex Var. Elliptic Equ. 2023, 68, 81–106. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Djellab, N.; Boureghda, A. A moving boundary model for oxygen diffusion in a sick cell. Comput. Methods Biomech. Biomed. Eng. 2022, 25, 1402–1408. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [PubMed]
- Brézis, H.; Lieb, E. A relation between pointwise convergence of functions and convergence of functionals. Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 1983, 88, 486–490. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
Disclaimer/Publisher’s Note: The statements, opinions and data contained in all publications are solely those of the individual author(s) and contributor(s) and not of MDPI and/or the editor(s). MDPI and/or the editor(s) disclaim responsibility for any injury to people or property resulting from any ideas, methods, instructions or products referred to in the content. |
© 2024 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).