Mass concentration of minimizers for $L^2$-subcritical Kirchhoff energy functional in bounded domains (2503.20300v1)

Abstract: We are concerned with $L^2$-constraint minimizers for the Kirchhoff functional $$ E_b(u)=\int_{\Omega}|\nabla u|^2\mathrm{d}x+\frac{b}{2}\left(\int_\Omega|\nabla u|^2\mathrm{d}x\right)^2+\int_\Omega V(x)u^2\mathrm{d}x-\frac{\beta}{2}\int_{\Omega}|u|^4\mathrm{d}x, $$ where $b>0$, $\beta>0$ and $V(x)$ is a trapping potential in a bounded domain $\Omega$ of $\mathbb R^2$. As is well known that minimizers exist for any $b>0$ and $\beta>0$, while the minimizers do not exist for $b=0$ and $\beta\geq\beta^*$, where $\beta^*=\int_{\mathbb R^2}|Q|^2\mathrm{d}x$ and $Q$ is the unique positive solution of $-\Delta u+u-u^3=0$ in $\mathbb R^2$. In this paper, we show that for $\beta=\beta^*$, the energy converges to 0, but for $\beta>\beta^*$, the minimal energy will diverge to $-\infty$ as $b\searrow0$. Further, we give the refined limit behaviors and energy estimates of minimizers as $b\searrow0$ for $\beta=\beta^*$ or $\beta>\beta^*$. For both cases, we obtain that the mass of minimizers concentrates either at an inner point or near the boundary of $\Omega$, depending on whether $V(x)$ attains its flattest global minimum at an inner point of $\Omega$ or not. Meanwhile, we find an interesting phenomenon that the blow-up rate when the minimizers concentrate near the boundary of $\Omega$ is faster than concentration at an interior point if $\beta=\beta^*$, but the blow-up rates remain consistent if $\beta>\beta^*$.