On the Kirchhoff type equations in $\mathbb{R}^{N}$

Abstract

Consider a nonlinear Kirchhoff type equation as follows \begin{equation*} \left\{ \begin{array}{ll} -\left( a\int_{\mathbb{R}^{N}}|\nabla u|^{2}dx+b\right) \Delta u+u=f(x)\left\vert u\right\vert ^{p-2}u & \text{ in }\mathbb{R}^{N}, \\ u\in H^{1}(\mathbb{R}^{N}), & \end{array}% \right. \end{equation*}% where $N\geq 1,a,b>0,2<p<\min \left\{ 4,2^{\ast }\right\}$($2^{\ast }=\infty $ for $N=1,2$ and $2^{\ast }=2N/(N-2)$ for $N\geq 3)$ and the function $f\in C(\mathbb{R}^{N})\cap L^{\infty }(\mathbb{R}^{N})$. Distinguishing from the existing results in the literature, we are more interested in the geometric properties of the energy functional related to the above problem. Furthermore, the nonexistence, existence, unique and multiplicity of positive solutions are proved dependent on the parameter $a$ and the dimension $N.$ In particular, we conclude that a unique positive solution exists for $1\leq N\leq4$ while at least two positive solutions are permitted for $N\geq5$.