Abstract
We survey recent results on ground and bound state solutions \(E:\Omega\rightarrow\mathbb{R}^3\) of the problem
on a bounded Lipschitz domain Ω ⊂ ℝ3, where ∇× denotes the curl operator in ℝ3. The equation describes the propagation of the time-harmonic electric field \(\mathfrak{R}\{E(x)\rm{e}^{i\omega\it{t}}\}\) in a nonlinear isotropic material Ω with \(\lambda=-\mu\varepsilon\omega^2\leqslant0\), where μ and ε stand for the permeability and the linear part of the permittivity of the material. The nonlinear term \(|E|^{p-2}E\) with \(2<p\leqslant2^*=6\) comes from the nonlinear polarization and the boundary conditions are those for Ω surrounded by a perfect conductor. The problem has a variational structure; however the energy functional associated with the problem is strongly indefinite and does not satisfy the Palais-Smale condition. We show the underlying difficulties of the problem and enlist some open questions.
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This work was supported by the National Science Centre of Poland (Grant No. 2013/09/B/ST1/01963).
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Mederski, J. Nonlinear time-harmonic Maxwell equations in a bounded domain: Lack of compactness. Sci. China Math. 61, 1963–1970 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11425-017-9312-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11425-017-9312-8
Keywords
- time-harmonic Maxwell equations
- perfect conductor
- ground state
- variational methods
- strongly indefinite functional
- Nehari-Pankov manifold
- Brezis-Nirenberg problem
- critical exponent