GLOBAL BRANCH OF SOLUTIONS FOR NON-LINEAR SCHRÖDINGER EQUATIONS WITH DEEPENING POTENTIAL WELL

We consider the stationary non-linear Schrödinger equation\begin{equation*}\Delta u + \{1 + \lambda g(x)\} u = f(u)\mbox{with}u \in H^{1} (\mathbb{R}^{N}), u \not\equiv 0,\end{equation*} where $\lambda >0$ and the functions $f$ and $g$ are such that\begin{equation*} \lim_{s \rightarrow 0}\frac{f(s)}{s} = 0 \mbox{and} 1 < \alpha + 1 = \lim _{|s| \rightarrow \infty}\frac{f(s)}{s} < \infty\end{equation*} and \begin{equation*} g(x)\equiv 0 \mbox{on} \bar{\Omega}, g(x)\in (0, 1] \mbox{on} {\mathbb{R}^{N}} \setminus {\overline{\Omega}} \mbox{and} \lim_{|x| \rightarrow + \infty} g(x) = 1 \end{equation*} for some bounded open set $\Omega \in \mathbb{R}^{N}$. We use topological methods to establish the existence of two connected sets $\mathcal{D}^{\pm}$ of positive/negative solutions in $\mathbb{R} \times W^{2, p} (\mathbb{R}^{N})$ where $p \in [2, \infty) \cap (\frac{N}{2},\infty)$ that cover the interval $(\alpha,\Lambda(\alpha))$ in the sense that \begin{align*} P \mathcal{D}^{\pm} & = (\alpha, \Lambda(\alpha)) \text{where}P(\lambda, u) = \lambda \text{and furthermore,} \\ \lim_{\lambda \rightarrow \Lambda(\alpha)-}\left\Vert u_{\lambda} \right\Vert _{L^{\infty} (\mathbb{R}^{N})} & = \lim_{\lambda \rightarrow \Lambda (\alpha )-} \left\Vert u_{\lambda} \right\Vert _{W^{2, p}(\mathbb{R}^{N})} = \infty \text{ for }(\lambda, u_{\lambda}) \in \mathcal{D}^{\pm}. \end{align*} The number $\Lambda(\alpha)$ is characterized as the unique value of $\lambda$ in the interval $(\alpha, \infty)$ for which the asymptotic linearization has a positive eigenfunction. Our work uses a degree for Fredholm maps of index zero.