On the lack of compactness in the 2D critical Sobolev embedding

This paper is devoted to the description of the lack of compactness of $H^1_{rad}(\R^2)$ in the Orlicz space. Our result is expressed in terms of the concentration-type examples derived by P. -L. Lions. The approach that we adopt to establish this characterization is completely different from the methods used in the study of the lack of compactness of Sobolev embedding in Lebesgue spaces and take into account the variational aspect of Orlicz spaces. We also investigate the feature of the solutions of non linear wave equation with exponential growth, where the Orlicz norm plays a decisive role.