Concentration-compactness principle for Trudinger–Moser inequalities on Heisenberg groups and existence of ground state solutions

Abstract

Let $\mathbb{H}^{n}=\mathbb{C}^{n}\times\mathbb{R}$ be the $n$-dimensional Heisenberg group, $Q=2n+2$ be the homogeneous dimension of $\mathbb{H}^{n}$. We extend the well-known concentration-compactness principle on finite domains in the Euclidean spaces of \ P. L. Lions to the setting of the Heisenberg group $\mathbb{H}^{n}$. Furthermore, we also obtain the corresponding concentration-compactness principle for the Sobolev space $HW^{1,Q}\left( \mathbb{H}^{n}\right) $ on the entire Heisenberg group $\mathbb{H}^{n}$. Our results improve the sharp Trudinger-Moser inequality on domains of finite measure in $\mathbb{H}^{n}$ by Cohn and the second author [8] and the corresponding one on the whole space $\mathbb{H}^n$ by Lam and the second author [21]. All the proofs of the concentration-compactness principles in the literature even in the Euclidean spaces use the rearrangement argument and the Poly\'a-Szeg\"{o} inequality. Due to the absence of the Poly\'a-Szeg\"{o} inequality on the Heisenberg group, we will develop a different argument. Our approach is surprisingly simple and general and can be easily applied to other settings where symmetrization argument does not work. As an application of the concentration-compactness principle, we establish the existence of ground state solutions for a class of $Q$- Laplacian subelliptic equations on $\mathbb{H}^{n}$ with nonlinear terms $f$ of maximal exponential growth $\exp\left( \alpha t^{\frac{Q}{Q-1}}\right) $ as $t\rightarrow+\infty$.