Paper detail

Constrained energy minimization and ground states for NLS with point defects

We investigate the ground states of the one-dimensional nonlinear Schrödinger equation with a defect located at a fixed point. The nonlinearity is focusing and consists of a subcritical power. The notion of ground state can be defined in several (often non-equivalent) ways. We define a ground state as a minimizer of the energy functional among the functions endowed with the same mass. This is the physically meaningful definition in the main fields of application of NLS. In this context we prove an abstract theorem that revisits the concentration-compactness method and which is suitable to treat NLS with inhomogeneities. Then we apply it to three models, describing three different kinds of defect: delta potential, delta prime interaction, and dipole. In the three cases we explicitly compute ground states and we show their orbital stability. This problem had been already considered for the delta and for the delta prime defect with a different constrained minimization problem, i.e. defining ground states as the minimizers of the action on the Nehari manifold. The case of dipole defect is entirely new.