Constraint Minimizers of the Gross-Pitaevskii Functional with Logarithmic Convolution and Ringed Shape Potential ()
1. Introduction and Main Results
The Schrödinger-Poisson system is a basic model in quantum mechanics that describes how charged particles interact through self-consistent electric fields. This system appears in many areas of physics, including semiconductor physics, quantum chemistry, and Bose-Einstein condensates. Since the landmark experiments on Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) in ultracold atomic gases, a large number of bosonic atoms have been confined in a trapping potential and cooled to extremely low temperatures. Below the critical temperature, a macroscopic number of particles are observed to condense into the same single-particle quantum state. These Bose-Einstein condensates exhibit a variety of intriguing quantum phenomena, such as critical mass collapse and the emergence of quantum vortices in rotating traps. Specifically, if the interatomic interactions within the condensate are attractive, the system will collapse abruptly as soon as the particle number exceeds a critical threshold. We can find detailed information in [1]-[5].
In this paper, we consider the constraint minimizers of the following variational problem
(1.1)
the energy functional
(1.2)
where
describes the attractive interactions. We study a two-dimensional system with the external potential
is a fixed parameter. This potential has a ring shape, with its minimum value on the circle
. In recent years, such ring-shaped potentials have become important, because they can be created in laboratories using optical traps and magnetic fields. Physically, this potential can trap quantum particles to move mainly along a circular path, leading to interesting effects like persistent currents and vortex patterns. We can see [6]-[8].
From a mathematical perspective, the ring potential
poses several analytical challenges. First, it is non-convex, with its minimum attained on a closed curve rather than at an isolated point, resulting in a continuum of critical points that complicate standard minimization methods. Second, near its minimum, the potential exhibits a “Mexican hat” geometry, which requires new approaches to study concentration phenomena near critical parameters.
A further difficulty arises from combining the ring potential with the logarithmic convolution term. The broken symmetry of the potential interacts with the long-range nature of the logarithmic term, leading to a nontrivial variational structure. Proving existence of constrained minimizers demands careful estimates in weighted spaces and refined inequalities to balance the potential and nonlocal contributions. Moreover, the geometry of the ring potential complicates the precise location of concentration points, rendering classical symmetry arguments ineffective and calling for new analytical tools.
The logarithmic term derives from the fundamental solution of the Poisson equation in two dimensions and models electrostatic interactions in
. Unlike the three-dimensional Coulomb potential, it is singular at both short and long distances, adding further mathematical complexity to the analysis.
The logarithmic term creates several mathematical problems that make this work different from previous studies. First,
is not well-defined on the standard Sobolev space
, because the logarithmic kernel decays slowly and has singular behavior. To solve the problem, drew inspiration from [9] [10], we denote the subspace
endowed with the norm
the norm of
is denoted by
for any
, and then define the constraint set
where and below we use
to denote the standard Lebegure norm on
for
. Recall from ([11], Lemma 3.1) that for any
,
(1.3)
We claim that
for any
. Indeed,
it means that we can work in
.
Second, the logarithmic term is unbounded both at infinity and near the origin, requiring careful decomposition and estimation methods. To overcome these problems, we work in a weighted Sobolev space and split the logarithmic kernel into positive and negative parts. This approach lets us handle the negative part using the Hardy-Littlewood-Sobolev inequality while controlling the positive part through weighted estimates.
Inspired by [9] [10] [12], we perform that
(1.4)
Denote
Similar to [13] we then deduce that
(1.5)
In virtue of the Hardy-Littlewood-Sobolev inequality (cf. [14]):
(1.6)
there exists a constant
such that
(1.7)
It follows from (1.4)-(1.7) that
is well defined on
, and thus the energy functional
is well defined on
.
If the external potential
in (1.2) is ignored, it was shown in [9] that
possesses minimizers if
,
, or
,
. Here
, and
is the unique positive radially symmetric solution of the following scalar field equation (cf. [15] [16]):
(1.8)
Furthermore,
decays exponentially as
in the sense that
(1.9)
In [17], it has been proved that the above function
is an achievement function of the equality in the following classical Gagliardo-Nirenberg inequality:
(1.10)
From (1.8) and (1.10) we can get that
(1.11)
By means of these results, we establish the existence and nonexistence of minimizers for (1.1).
Theorem 1.1. Let
be the unique positive solution of (1.8) and
. [(1)]
1) If
, then there exists at least one minimizer of
for
;
2) If
, then there is no minimizer of
for
;
3) If
, then there is no minimizer of
for
.
Moreover,
for
and
for
when
.
The proof of Theorem 1.1 needs the Hardy-Littlewood-Sobolev inequality (1.6) and Gagliardo-Nirenberg inequality (1.10). However, because of
, it is hard to get the lower bound of
, furthermore, in the case of
, the weak lower semicontinuity of
is difficult to obtain. To solve the above-mentioned difficulties, we decomposed the potential term and bounded the logarithmic convolution term to prove that
is bounded from below. Subsequently, we proved the continuity of the logarithmic term to obtain the weak lower semicontinuity of
.
The following result deals with the limiting behavior of minimizers of
as
, where
is fixed. We only consider positive minimizers of
in the subsequent analysis.
Theorem 1.2. Assume that
is a positive minimizer of
for
and
. Then we have
in
,
where
is the unique maximum point of
as
and there exists some constant
satisfies
In establishing Theorem 1.2, we confront several additional challenges. First, the presence of the logarithmic convolution term complicates the analysis of the energy functional
given in (1.2). To address this, we employ a key estimate: there exists a constant
, independent of
and
, satisfying
where
denotes a rescaled version of the positive minimizer
. Second, the scaled minimizer
lacks uniform boundedness as
due to the translation-variance of the norm in
. We resolve this by adapting techniques from [18]. Lastly, obtaining precise details about the maximum point
as
requires novel approaches, because the term
changes under translations and
when
.
2. Existence and Nonexistence of Minimizers
In this section, we shall give the proof of Theorem 1.1 on the existence and nonexistence of minimizers for
.
Proof of Theorem 1.1. 1) We first prove the existence of minimizers for
when
and
. For any function
with
, we recall the following Gagliardo-Nirenberg inequality from [17]:
(2.1)
where
is the unique positive solution of the following elliptic equation
Combining Equation (1.7) with inequality (2.1), we find that there exists a constant
such that
(2.2)
In view of above facts, we now prove Theorem 1.1 (1) by the following four cases.
Case 1:
and
. By Young’s Inequality, we have that for any
,
(2.3)
taking
, then by (1.2), (1.4), (1.10), (2.2) and (2.3), we get that for
,
(2.4)
this shows that
is bounded below. Let
be a minimizing sequence for
. From (2.4), we observe that both
and
is bounded independently of
. Combined with
, we conclude that
is uniformly bounded in
. Due to (1.3), there exists a function
such that
(2.5)
which means that
. Moreover, it follows from ([12], Lemma 2.2) that
By the weak lower semicontinuity, we have
We conclude from the above that
which implies that
, and thus
is a minimizer of
.
Case 2:
and
. By (1.2), (1.4), (2.2) and (2.3), we get that for
,
it shows that
is bounded below. Following the same approach as in Case 1, we find that
has at least one minimizer for
and
.
Case 3:
and
. Applying Young’s inequality, we deduce from (1.5) that for any
,
(2.6)
Taking
, by (1.2), (1.4), (1.10) and (2.6), we then obtain that for
,
by (2.3), taking
, then we get
(2.7)
which yields that
is bounded from below. Similar to Case 1, one can choose a minimizing sequence
and
, it follows that we obtain the equivalent conclusion (2.5).
Using the same argumentation method as in [13], we can obtain
(2.8)
Then then following proof is similar to that of Case 1.
Case 4:
and
. By (1.2), (1.4) (1.5) and (2.3), we get that for
,
which means that
is bounded from below. The following proof is similar to that of Case 3.
2) We next prove the nonexistence of minimizers of
for
,
, or
,
. Consider the test function
Clearly,
for all
. It follows from (1.10) and (1.11) that for
,
, or
,
,
(2.9)
it means that
has no minimizer when
with
, or when
with
. Moreover,
for
with
, and
for
.
3) We now examine the limit
. Assuming
, we set
in (2.9) and find that
as
. It implies that
for
. Therefore,
when
. This establishes the proof of Theorem 1.1. □
3. Limiting Behavior of Minimizers
In this section, we prove Theorem 1.2 on the limiting behavior of positive minimizers for
as
, where
is fixed. If
is a minimizer of
for
and
, then the variational theory shows that
satisfies the following Euler-Lagrange equation:
(3.1)
where
is the associated Lagrange multiplier and satisfies that
(3.2)
We first establish some estimates for positive minimizers.
Lemma 3.1. Let
be a positive minimizer of
for
and
, define
and
in
,(3.3)
where
is a global maximum point of
. Then we have
1)
satisfies that for any
,
and
as
;(3.4)
2) There exists a constant
, independent of
and
, such that
as
;(3.5)
3)
satisfies that for any
,
in
as
,(3.6)
where
is the unique positive solution of (1.8).
We can draw on the proof method of Lemma 3.1 in [13], and will not elaborate on it in detail here.
Lemma 3.2. Let
be given by (3.3), and
is a global maximum point of
. Then we have [(1)]
1) There exists a large constant
such that for any
,
and
uniformly for
as
, (3.7)
where the constant
is independent of
;
2) The global maximum point
of
is unique and satisfies that for any
, there exists a constant
independent of
and
such that
(3.8)
Proof. Similar to [13], we can obtain (3.7). Now we prove (3.8). Due to (1.2) (1.10) and (3.3), that
(3.9)
We claim that
is uniformly bounded as
. Otherwise, there exists a sequence of
, denoted by
, such that
as
, it means that for any constant
and
,
This estimate and (3.9) imply that
(3.10)
holds for any
, and
as
, which contradicts with Theorem 1.1. So, the above claim is proved. Then, we obtain that there exists a constant
independent of
and
such that
it further implies that for any
,
as
.
We finally prove the uniqueness of the global maximum point
of
as
. Due to (3.1) and (3.3), we obtain that
satisfies
(3.11)
Denote
So we get
(3.12)
We deduce from (3.3) that
(3.13)
it means that
is bounded uniformly in
for
, and
is bounded uniformly in
. Employing the
-estimate (refer to[19], Theorem 9.11) on (3.12), we establish that
is uniformly bounded in
as
. Through the standard Sobolev embedding theorem, we further deduce
(3.14)
According to ([12], Proposition 2.3), the expression
belongs to
when
. Consequently,
shows uniform boundedness in
for large
during this limit. Using the Schauder estimate (see ([19], Theorem 6.2)) on Equation (3.12), we determine that
is uniformly bounded in
as
. This implies that there exists
such that, up to a subsequence,
converges to
in
as
. From Equation (3.6), we have
, which gives
(3.15)
for sufficiently large
.
Since the origin 0 is the unique global maximum point of
, (3.15) demonstrates that all local maxima of
must converge toward 0 and remain confined within
for some small
as
. The condition
ensures
holds for
. Following ([20], Lemma 4.2), we establish that as
, each
possesses precisely one maximum point located at 0. Thus, the global maximum
of
becomes unique as
, thereby concluding the proof of Lemma 3.2. □
Now we prove the refined limiting behavior of positive minimizers of
in
for
as
.
Proof of Theorem 1.2. In view of Lemma 3.1 and Lemma 3.2, we only need to prove that
(3.16)
and
(3.17)
where
is defined by (3.3) and
is the unique maximum point of the positive minimizer
.
We can obtain (3.16) by using the same argumentation method as that in [13]. Next, we prove (3.16) as follows. We first give the upper estimate of
as
Setting
in (2.9), we obtain that
(3.18)
We now give the lower estimate of
as
. From [13] we have that
(3.19)
We infer from (1.2), (1.10), (1.11), (3.16) and (3.19) that
(3.20)
the equal sign can be obtained when
takes the following value,
(3.21)
so we get a more precise estimate of
as
.
Combining (3.18) with (3.9), we conclude that as
,
and
satisfies (3.21). Moreover, we derive from (3.16) and (3.21) that
This completes the proof of Theorem 1.2. □
4. Conclusion
In conclusion, we have completely classified the existence and non-existence of constraint minimizers for a Gross-Pitaevskii functional with ring potential and logarithmic nonlocality. The critical parameter
is identified, and the blow-up profile of minimizers as
is rigorously derived. This work extends previous studies on local interaction models to the nonlocal logarithmic case under a ring-shaped constraint, revealing new concentration phenomena and offering a basis for further analytical and numerical investigations.