Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 February 2022
We consider the following class of quasilinear Schrödinger equations proposed in plasma physics and nonlinear optics $-\Delta u+V(x)u+\frac {\kappa }{2}[\Delta (u^{2})]u=h(u)$ in the whole two-dimensional Euclidean space. We establish the existence and qualitative properties of standing wave solutions for a broader class of nonlinear terms $h(s)$ with the critical exponential growth. We apply the dual approach to obtain solutions in the usual Sobolev space $H^{1}(\mathbb {R}^{2})$ when the parameter $\kappa >0$ is sufficiently small. Minimax techniques, Trudinger–Moser inequality and the Nash–Moser iteration method play an essential role in establishing our results.