Negative energy ground states for the $L^2$-critical NLSE on metric graphs

We investigate the existence of ground states with prescribed mass for the focusing nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation with $L^2$-critical power nonlinearity on noncompact quantum graphs. We prove that, unlike the case of the real line, for certain classes of graphs there exist ground states with negative energy for a whole interval of masses. A key role is played by a thorough analysis of Gagliardo-Nirenberg inequalities and on estimates of the optimal constants. Most of the techniques are new and suited to the investigation of variational problems on metric graphs.