Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 April 2016
Using a regular Borel measure μ ⩾ 0 we derive a proper subspace of the commonly used Sobolev space D1(ℝN) when N ⩾ 3. The space resembles the standard Sobolev space H1(Ω) when Ω is a bounded region with a compact Lipschitz boundary ∂Ω. An equivalence characterization and an example are provided that guarantee that is compactly embedded into L1(RN). In addition, as an application we prove an existence result of positive solutions to an elliptic equation in ℝN that involves the Laplace operator with the critical Sobolev nonlinearity, or with a general nonlinear term that has a subcritical and superlinear growth. We also briefly discuss the compact embedding of to Lp(ℝN) when N ⩾ 2 and 2 ⩽ p ⩽ N.