Geometrically distinct solutions of nonlinear elliptic systems with periodic potentials

In this paper, we study the following nonlinear elliptic systems: $$\begin{aligned} {\left\{ \begin{array}{ll} -\Delta u_1+V_1(x)u_1=\partial _{u_1}F(x,u)&{}\quad x\in {\mathbb {R}}^N,\\ -\Delta u_2+V_2(x)u_2=\partial _{u_2}F(x,u)&{}\quad x\in {\mathbb {R}}^N, \end{array}\right. } \end{aligned}$$ - Δ u 1 + V 1 ( x ) u 1 = ∂ u 1 F ( x , u ) x ∈ R N , - Δ u 2 + V 2 ( x ) u 2 = ∂ u 2 F ( x , u ) x ∈ R N , where $$u=(u_1,u_2):{\mathbb {R}}^N\rightarrow {\mathbb {R}}^2$$ u = ( u 1 , u 2 ) : R N → R 2 , F and $$V_i$$ V i are periodic in $$x_1,\ldots ,x_N$$ x 1 , … , x N and $$0\notin \sigma (-\,\Delta +V_i)$$ 0 ∉ σ ( - Δ + V i ) for $$i=1,2$$ i = 1 , 2 , where $$\sigma (-\,\Delta +V_i)$$ σ ( - Δ + V i ) stands for the spectrum of the Schrödinger operator $$-\,\Delta +V_i$$ - Δ + V i . Under some suitable assumptions on F and $$V_i$$ V i , we obtain the existence of infinitely many geometrically distinct solutions. The result presented in this paper generalizes the result in Szulkin and Weth (J Funct Anal 257(12):3802–3822, 2009).