Normalized solutions to mass supercritical Schrodinger equations with negative potential

Abstract

We study the existence of positive solutions with prescribed $L^2$-norm for the Schr\"odinger equation \[ -\Delta u-V(x)u+\lambda u=|u|^{p-2}u\qquad\lambda\in \mathbb{R},\quad u\in H^1(\mathbb{R}^N), \] where $V\ge 0$, $N\ge 1$ and $p\in\left(2+\frac 4 N,2^*\right)$, $2^*:=\frac{2N}{N-2}$ if $N\ge 3$ and $2^*:=+\infty$ if $N=1,2$. We treat two cases. Firstly, under an explicit smallness assumption on $V$ and no condition on the mass, we prove the existence of a mountain pass solution at positive energy level, and we exclude the existence of solutions with negative energy. Secondly, requiring that the mass is smaller than some explicit bound, depending on $V$, and that $V$ is not too small in a suitable sense, we find two solutions: a local minimizer with negative energy, and a mountain pass solution with positive energy. Moreover, a nonexistence result is proved.