On the Kirchhoff equation with prescribed mass and general nonlinearities

Abstract: In the present paper, we apply a global branch approach to study the existence, non-existence and multiplicity of positive normalized solutions $(\lambda_c, u_c)\in \mathbb{R}\times H^1(\mathbb{R}^N)$ to the following Kirchhoff problem $$ -\left(a+b\int_{\mathbb{R}^N}|\nabla u|^2dx\right)\Delta u+\lambda u=g(u)~\hbox{in}~\mathbb{R}^N,\;N\geq 1 $$ satisfying the normalization constraint $ \displaystyle\int_{\mathbb{R}^N}u^2=c, $ which appears in free vibrations of elastic strings. The parameters $a,b>0$ are prescribed as well as the mass $c>0$. Due to the presence of the non-local term $b\int_{\mathbb{R}^N}|\nabla u|^2dx \Delta u$, such problems lack the mountain pass geometry in the higher dimension case $N\geq 5$. Our result seems to be the first attempt in this aspect.