Solitary waves for the power degenerate NLS -- existence and stability

Abstract: We consider a semilinear Schr\"odinger equation, driven by the power degenerate second order differential operator $\nabla\cdot (|x|^{2a} \nabla), a\in (0,1)$. We construct the solitary waves, in the sharp range of parameters, as minimizers of the Caffarelli-Kohn-Nirenberg's inequality. Depending on the parameter $a$ and the nonlinearity, we establish a number of properties, such as positivity, smoothness (away from the origin) and almost exponential decay. Then, and as a consequence of our variational constrcution, we completely characterize the spectral stability of the said solitons. We pose some natural conjectures, which are still open -- such as the radiality of the ground states, the non-degeneracy and most importantly uniqueness.