Mountain-pass-type solutions for Schrödinger equations in R2 with unbounded or vanishing potentials and critical exponential growth nonlinearities

Abstract

Abstract In this article, we consider the existence of solutions for nonlinear elliptic equations of the form − Δ u + V ( ∣ x ∣ ) u = Q ( ∣ x ∣ ) f ( u ) , x ∈ R 2 , -\Delta u+V\left(| x| )u=Q\left(| x| )f\left(u),\hspace{1em}x\in {{\mathbb{R}}}^{2}, where the nonlinear term f ( s ) f\left(s) has critical exponential growth which behaves like e α s 2 {e}^{\alpha {s}^{2}} , the radial potentials V , Q : R + → R V,Q:{{\mathbb{R}}}^{+}\to {\mathbb{R}} are unbounded, singular at the origin or decaying to zero at infinity. By combining the variational methods, Trudinger-Moser inequality, and some new approaches to estimate precisely the minimax level of the energy functional, we prove the existence of a Mountain-pass-type solution for the above problem under some weak assumptions.