Sharp Affine and Improved Moser–Trudinger–Adams Type Inequalities on Unbounded Domains in the Spirit of Lions

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is threefold. First, we prove sharp singular affine Moser–Trudinger inequalities on both bounded and unbounded domains in \({\mathbb {R}}^{n}\). In particular, we will prove the following much sharper affine Moser–Trudinger inequality in the spirit of Lions (Rev Mat Iberoamericana 1(2):45–121, 1985) (see our Theorem 1.4): Let \(\alpha _{n}=n\left( \frac{n\pi ^{\frac{n}{2}}}{\Gamma (\frac{n}{2}+1)}\right) ^{\frac{1}{n-1}}\), \(0\le \beta 0\). Then there exists a constant \(C=C\left( n,\beta \right) >0\) such that for all \(0\le \alpha \le \left( 1-\frac{\beta }{n}\right) \alpha _{n}\) and \(u\in C_{0}^{\infty }\left( {\mathbb {R}}^{n}\right) \setminus \left\{ 0\right\} \) with the affine energy \(~{\mathcal {E}}_{n}\left( u\right) <1\), we have $$\begin{aligned} {\displaystyle \int \nolimits _{{\mathbb {R}}^{n}}} \frac{\phi _{n,1}\left( \frac{2^{\frac{1}{n-1}}\alpha }{\left( 1+{\mathcal {E}}_{n}\left( u\right) ^{n}\right) ^{\frac{1}{n-1}}}\left| u\right| ^{\frac{n}{n-1}}\right) }{\left| x\right| ^{\beta }}dx\le C\left( n,\beta \right) \frac{\left\| u\right\| _{n}^{n-\beta }}{\left| 1-{\mathcal {E}}_{n}\left( u\right) ^{n}\right| ^{1-\frac{\beta }{n}}}. \end{aligned}$$ Moreover, the constant \(\left( 1-\frac{\beta }{n}\right) \alpha _{n}\) is the best possible in the sense that there is no uniform constant \(C(n, \beta )\) independent of u in the above inequality when \(\alpha >\left( 1-\frac{\beta }{n}\right) \alpha _{n}\). Second, we establish the following improved Adams type inequality in the spirit of Lions (Theorem 1.8): Let \(0\le \beta 0\). Then there exists a constant \(C=C\left( m,\beta ,\tau \right) >0\) such that $$\begin{aligned} \underset{u\in W^{2,m}\left( {\mathbb {R}}^{2m}\right) , \int _{ {\mathbb {R}}^{2m}}\left| \Delta u\right| ^{m}+\tau \left| u\right| ^{m} \le 1}{\sup } {\displaystyle \int \nolimits _{{\mathbb {R}}^{2m}}} \frac{\phi _{2m,2}\left( \frac{2^{\frac{1}{m-1}}\alpha }{\left( 1+\left\| \Delta u\right\| _{m}^{m}\right) ^{\frac{1}{m-1}}}\left| u\right| ^{\frac{m}{m-1}}\right) }{\left| x\right| ^{\beta }}dx\le C\left( m,\beta ,\tau \right) , \end{aligned}$$ for all \(0\le \alpha \le \left( 1-\frac{\beta }{2m}\right) \beta (2m,2)\). When \(\alpha >\left( 1-\frac{\beta }{2m}\right) \beta (2m,2)\), the supremum is infinite. In the above, we use $$\begin{aligned} \phi _{p,q}(t)=e^{t}- {\displaystyle \sum \limits _{j=0}^{j_{\frac{p}{q}}-2}} \frac{t^{j}}{j!},\,\,\,j_{\frac{p}{q}}=\min \left\{ j\in {\mathbb {N}} :j\ge \frac{p}{q}\right\} \ge \frac{p}{q}. \end{aligned}$$ The main difficulties of proving the above results are that the symmetrization method does not work. Therefore, our main ideas are to develop a rearrangement-free argument in the spirit of Lam and Lu (J Differ Equ 255(3):298–325, 2013; Adv Math 231(6): 3259–3287, 2012), Lam et al. (Nonlinear Anal 95: 77–92, 2014) to establish such theorems. Third, as an application, we will study the existence of weak solutions to the biharmonic equation $$\begin{aligned} \left\{ \begin{array}{l} \Delta ^{2}u+V(x)u=f(x,u)\text { in }{\mathbb {R}}^{4}\\ u\in H^{2}\left( {\mathbb {R}}^{4}\right) ,~u\ge 0 \end{array} \right. , \end{aligned}$$ where the nonlinearity f has the critical exponential growth.