Concentration of positive solutions for a class of fractional p-Kirchhoff type equations

Abstract

AbstractWe study the existence and concentration of positive solutions for the following class of fractional p-Kirchhoff type problems: $$ \left\{\begin{array}{@{}ll} \left(\varepsilon^{sp}a+\varepsilon^{2sp-3}b \,[u]_{s, p}^{p}\right)(-\Delta)_{p}^{s}u+V(x)u^{p-1}=f(u) & \text{in}\ \mathbb{R}^{3},\\ \noalign{ u\in W^{s, p}(\mathbb{R}^{3}), \quad u>0 & \text{in}\ \mathbb{R}^{3}, \end{array}\right.$$ where ɛ is a small positive parameter, a and b are positive constants, s ∈ (0, 1) and p ∈ (1, ∞) are such that $sp \in (\frac {3}{2}, 3)$, $(-\Delta )^{s}_{p}$ is the fractional p-Laplacian operator, f: ℝ → ℝ is a superlinear continuous function with subcritical growth and V: ℝ3 → ℝ is a continuous potential having a local minimum. We also prove a multiplicity result and relate the number of positive solutions with the topology of the set where the potential V attains its minimum values. Finally, we obtain an existence result when f(u) = uq−1 + γur−1, where γ > 0 is sufficiently small, and the powers q and r satisfy 2p < q < p*s ⩽ r. The main results are obtained by using some appropriate variational arguments.