Ground state solutions for a nonlocal equation in $\mathbb{R}^2$ involving vanishing potentials and exponential critical growth

Abstract: In this paper, we study the following class of nonlinear equations: $$ -\Delta u+V(x) u = \left[|x|^{-\mu}*(Q(x)F(u))\right]Q(x)f(u),\quad x\in\mathbb{R}^2, $$ where $V$ and $Q$ are continuous potentials, which can be unbounded or vanishing at infintiy, $f(s)$ is a continuous function, $F(s)$ is the primitive of $f(s)$, $*$ is the convolution operator and $0<\mu<2$. Assuming that the nonlinearity $f(s)$ has exponential critical growth, we establish the existence of ground state solutions by using variational methods. For this, we prove a new version of the Trudinger-Moser inequality for our setting, which was necessary to obtain our main results.