Existence of solutions for a critical fractional Kirchhoff type problem in ℝ N

Abstract

This paper concerns with the existence of solutions for the following fractional Kirchhoff problem with critical nonlinearity: $${\left( {\int {\int {_{{\mathbb{R}^{2N}}}\frac{{{{\left| {u\left( x \right) - u\left( y \right)} \right|}^2}}}{{{{\left| {x - y} \right|}^{N + 2s}}}}dxdy} } } \right)^{\theta - 1}}{\left( { - \Delta } \right)^s}u = \lambda h\left( x \right){u^{p - 1}} + {u^{2_s^* - 1}} in {\mathbb{R}^N},$$ where (−Δ) s is the fractional Laplacian operator with 0 < s < 1, 2 s * = 2N/(N − 2s), N > 2s, p ∈ (1, 2 s *), θ ∈ [1, 2 s */2), h is a nonnegative function and λ a real positive parameter. Using the Ekeland variational principle and the mountain pass theorem, we obtain the existence and multiplicity of solutions for the above problem for suitable parameter λ > 0. Furthermore, under some appropriate assumptions, our result can be extended to the setting of a class of nonlocal integro-differential equations. The remarkable feature of this paper is the fact that the coefficient of fractional Laplace operator could be zero at zero, which implies that the above Kirchhoff problem is degenerate. Hence our results are new even in the Laplacian case.