English

The Pohozaev identity for the Spectral Fractional Laplacian

Analysis of PDEs 2026-01-23 v1

Abstract

In this paper, we prove a Pohozaev identity for the Spectral Fractional Laplacian (SFL). This identity allows us to establish non-existence results for the semilinear Dirichlet problem (ΔΩ)su=f(u)(-\Delta|_{\Omega})^su = f(u) in star-shaped domains. The first such identity for non-local operators was established by Ros-Oton and Serra in 2014 for the Restricted Fractional Laplacian (RFL). However, the SFL differs fundamentally from the RFL, and the integration by parts strategy of Ros-Oton and Serra cannot be applied. Instead, we develop a novel spectral approach that exploits the underlying quadratic structure. Our main result expresses the identity as a Schur product of the classical Pohozaev quadratic form and a transition matrix that depends on the eigenvalues of the Laplacian and the fractional exponent.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2601.16185,
  title  = {The Pohozaev identity for the Spectral Fractional Laplacian},
  author = {Itahisa Barrios-Cubas and Matteo Bonforte and María del Mar González and Clara Torres-Latorre},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.16185},
  year   = {2026}
}

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15 pages