Critical Gagliardo–Nirenberg, Trudinger, Brezis–Gallouet–Wainger inequalities on graded groups and ground states

In this paper, we investigate critical Gagliardo–Nirenberg, Trudinger-type and Brezis–Gallouet–Wainger inequalities associated with the positive Rockland operators on graded Lie groups, which include the cases of [Formula: see text], Heisenberg, and general stratified Lie groups. As an application, using the critical Gagliardo–Nirenberg inequality, the existence of least energy solutions of nonlinear Schrödinger type equations is obtained. We also express the best constant in the critical Gagliardo–Nirenberg and Trudinger inequalities in the variational form as well as in terms of the ground state solutions of the corresponding nonlinear subelliptic equations. The obtained results are already new in the setting of general stratified Lie groups (homogeneous Carnot groups). Among new technical methods, we also extend Folland’s analysis of Hölder spaces from stratified Lie groups to general homogeneous Lie groups.

Best constants in Sobolev and Gagliardo–Nirenberg inequalities on graded groups and ground states for higher order nonlinear subelliptic equations

In this paper the dependence of the best constants in Sobolev and Gagliardo–Nirenberg inequalities on the precise form of the Sobolev space norm is investigated. The analysis is carried out on general graded Lie groups, thus including the cases of $$\mathbb {R}^n$$ R n , Heisenberg, and general stratified Lie groups, in all these cases the results being new. The Sobolev norms may be defined in terms of Rockland operators, i.e. the hypoelliptic homogeneous left-invariant differential operators on the group. The best constants are expressed in the variational form as well as in terms of the ground state solutions of the corresponding nonlinear subelliptic equations. The orders of these equations can be high depending on the Sobolev space order in the Sobolev or Gagliardo–Nirenberg inequalities, or may be fractional. Applications are obtained also to equations with lower order terms given by different hypoelliptic operators. Already in the case of $${\mathbb {R}}^n$$ R n , the obtained results extend the classical relations by Weinstein (Commun Math Phys 87(4):567–576 (1982/1983)) to a wide range of nonlinear elliptic equations of high orders with elliptic low order terms and a wide range of interpolation inequalities of Gagliardo–Nirenberg type. However, the proofs are different from those in Weinstein (Commun Math Phys 87(4):567–576 (1982/1983)) because of the impossibility of using the rearrangement inequalities already in the setting of the Heisenberg group. The considered class of graded groups is the most general class of nilpotent Lie groups where one can still consider hypoelliptic homogeneous invariant differential operators and the corresponding subelliptic differential equations.