Nondegeneracy of ground states for nonlinear scalar field equations involving the Sobolev-critical exponent at high frequencies in three and four dimensions

Abstract

We consider nonlinear scalar field equations involving the Sobolev-critical exponent at high frequencies $\omega$. Since the limiting profile of the ground state as $\omega \to \infty$ is the Aubin-Talenti function and degenerate in a certain sense, from the point of view of perturbation methods, the nondegeneracy problem for the ground states at high frequencies is subtle. In addition, since the limiting profile (Aubin-Talenti function) fails to lie in $L^2({\mathbb{R}}^d)$ for $d=3,4$, the nondegeneracy problem for $d=3,4$ is more difficult than that for $d\ge 5$ and an applicable methodology is not known. In this paper, we solve the nondegeneracy problem for $d=3,4$ by modifying the arguments in [2, 3]. We also show that the linearized operator around the ground state has exactly one negative eigenvalue.

35 pages