We consider the fractional nonlinear Schrödinger equation (−∆) s u + V (x)u = u p in R N , u → 0 as |x| → +∞, where V (x) is a uniformly positive potential and p > 1. Assuming that V (x) = V∞ + a |x| m + O 1 |x| m+σ as |x| → +∞,and p, m, σ, s satisfy certain conditions, we prove the existence of infinitely many positive solutions for N = 2. For s = 1, this corresponds to the multiplicity result given by Del Pino, Wei, and Yao [24] for the classical nonlinear Schrödinger equation.denotes the Fourier transform. The fractional Laplacian (−∆) s u of a function u ∈ H 2s (R 2 ) is defined in terms of its Fourier transform by the relation2010 Mathematics Subject Classification. 35J10, 35J61. Key words and phrases. Schrödinger equations, circulant matrix, fractional laplacian.5561 5562 WEIWEI AO, JUNCHENG WEI AND WEN YANGProblem (1.1) arises from the study of standing waves ϕ(x, t) = u(x)e iEt for the following nonlinear Schrödinger equations:( 1.2) Equation (1.2) was introduced by Laskin [33] as an extension of the classical nonlinear Schrödinger equation for s = 1, where the Brownian motion of the quantum paths is replaced by a Lévy flight. Namely, if the path integral over Brownian trajectories leads to the well-known Schrödinger equation, then the path integral over Lévy trajectories leads to the fractional Shcrödinger equation. Here, ϕ = ϕ(x, t)represents the quantum mechanical probability amplitude for a given unit-mass particle to have position x at time t (the corresponding probability density is |ϕ| 2 ), under a confinement resulting from the potential V . We refer the reader to [33,34,35] for detailed physical discussions and the motivation for equation (1.2). Note that the fractional Schrödinger case exhibits interesting differences from to the classical case. For instance, the energy of a particle of unit mass is proportional to |p| 2s (rather than |p| 2 ; see, e.g., [33]). Furthermore, space/time scaling of the process implies that the fractal dimension of Lévy paths is 2s (unlike in the classical Brownian case, where it is 2).Lévy processes occur widely in physics, chemistry, and biology for instance in high energy Hamiltonians of relativistic theories and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. See [17,30] for further motivation of the fractional Laplacian in modern physics. Stable Lévy processes that give rise to equations with fractional Laplacians have recently attracted significant research interest, and there are many results in the literature regarding the existence of such solutions, for example in [1,9,8,18,26,44] and references therein.Let us come back to equation (1.1). When s = 1, i.e., (−∆) s reduces to the standard Laplacian −∆, equation (1.1) becomes − ∆u + V (x)u = u p in R 2 , u(x) → 0 as |x| → +∞.(1.3) Equation (1.3) has been extensively studied in the last thirty years. Ifthen one can show that (1.3) has a least energy (ground state) solution by using the concentration compactness principle (cf. [37,38]). However, if (1.4) does not hold, then problem (1.3) may not admit a least energy solu...