In this note we report on some recent progress [10, 11, 12] about the study of global minimizers of a continuum Landau–De Gennes energy functional for nematic liquid crystals in three-dimensional domains. First, we discuss absence of singularities for minimizing configurations under norm constraint, as well as absence of the isotropic phase for the unconstrained minimizers, together with the related biaxial escape phenomenon. Then, under suitable assumptions on the topology of the domain and on the Dirichlet boundary condition, we show that smoothness of energy minimizing configurations yields the emergence of nontrivial topological structure in their biaxiality level sets. Then, we discuss the previous properties under both the norm constraint and an axial symmetry constraint, showing that in this case only partial regularity is available, away from a finite set located on the symmetry axis. In addition, we show that singularities may appear due to energy efficiency and we describe precisely the asymptotic profile around singular points. Finally, in an appropriate class of domains and boundary data we obtain qualitative properties of the biaxial surfaces, showing that smooth minimizers exibit torus structure, as predicted in [16, 24, 25, 39].

Torus-like solutions for the Landau–De Gennes model / Pisante, Adriano. - In: ANNALES DE LA FACULTÉ DES SCIENCES DE TOULOUSE.. - ISSN 0240-2963. - 30:2(2021), pp. 301-326. [10.5802/afst.1676]

Torus-like solutions for the Landau–De Gennes model

Pisante, Adriano
2021

Abstract

In this note we report on some recent progress [10, 11, 12] about the study of global minimizers of a continuum Landau–De Gennes energy functional for nematic liquid crystals in three-dimensional domains. First, we discuss absence of singularities for minimizing configurations under norm constraint, as well as absence of the isotropic phase for the unconstrained minimizers, together with the related biaxial escape phenomenon. Then, under suitable assumptions on the topology of the domain and on the Dirichlet boundary condition, we show that smoothness of energy minimizing configurations yields the emergence of nontrivial topological structure in their biaxiality level sets. Then, we discuss the previous properties under both the norm constraint and an axial symmetry constraint, showing that in this case only partial regularity is available, away from a finite set located on the symmetry axis. In addition, we show that singularities may appear due to energy efficiency and we describe precisely the asymptotic profile around singular points. Finally, in an appropriate class of domains and boundary data we obtain qualitative properties of the biaxial surfaces, showing that smooth minimizers exibit torus structure, as predicted in [16, 24, 25, 39].
2021
Liquid crystals; axisymmetric torus solutions; harmonic maps
01 Pubblicazione su rivista::01a Articolo in rivista
Torus-like solutions for the Landau–De Gennes model / Pisante, Adriano. - In: ANNALES DE LA FACULTÉ DES SCIENCES DE TOULOUSE.. - ISSN 0240-2963. - 30:2(2021), pp. 301-326. [10.5802/afst.1676]
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11573/1562766
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