Radial and non radial ground states for a class of dilation invariant fourth order semilinear elliptic equations on $R^n$

Abstract

We prove existence of extremal functions for some Rellich-Sobolev type inequalities involving the $L^2$ norm of the Laplacian as a leading term and the $L^2$ norm of the gradient, weighted with a Hardy potential. Moreover we exhibit a breaking symmetry phenomenon when the nonlinearity has a growth close to the critical one and the singular potential increases in strength.