A sharp Adams inequality in dimension four and its extremal functions

Abstract

Let $Ω$ be a smooth oriented bounded domain in $\mathbb R^4$, $H_0^2(Ω)$ be the Sobolev space, and $λ_1(Ω)= \inf \{\|Δu\|_2^2 : u\in H_0^2(Ω), \|u\|_2 =1\}$ be the first eigenvalue of the bi-Laplacian operator $Δ^2$ on $Ω$. For $α\in [0,λ_1(Ω))$, we define $\|u\|_{2,α}^2 = \|Δu\|_2^2 - α\|u\|_2^2$, for $u \in H_0^2(Ω)$. In this paper, we will prove the following inequality \[ \sup_{u\in H_0^2(Ω),\, \|u\|_{2,α} \leq 1} \int_Ω e^{32 π^2 u(x)^2} dx < \infty. \] This strengthens a recent result of Lu and Yang \cite{LuYang}. We also show that there exists a function $u^*\in H_0^2(Ω)\cap C^4(\overlineΩ)$ such that $\|u^*\|_{2,α} =1$ and the supremum above is attained by $u^*$. Our proofs are based on the blow-up analysis method.