On a class of critical $(p,q)$-Laplacian problems

Abstract: We obtain nontrivial solutions of a critical $(p,q)$-Laplacian problem in a bounded domain. In addition to the usual difficulty of the loss of compactness associated with problems involving critical Sobolev exponents, this problem lacks a direct sum decomposition suitable for applying the classical linking theorem. We show that every Palais-Smale sequence at a level below a certain energy threshold admits a subsequence that converges weakly to a nontrivial critical point of the variational functional. Then we prove an abstract critical point theorem based on a cohomological index and use it to construct a minimax level below this threshold.