Related papers: Liquid crystals and harmonic maps in polyhedral do…
A unit-vector field n:P \to S^2 on a convex polyhedron P \subset R^3 satisfies tangent boundary conditions if, on each face of P, n takes values tangent to that face. Tangent unit-vector fields are necessarily discontinuous at the vertices…
Nematic liquid crystals in a polyhedral domain, a prototype for bistable displays, may be described by a unit-vector field subject to tangent boundary conditions. Here we consider the case of a rectangular prism. For configurations with…
We consider minimising $p$-harmonic maps from three-dimensional domains to the real projective plane, for $1<p<2$. These maps arise as least-energy configurations in variational models for nematic liquid crystals. We show that the singular…
We consider nematic liquid crystals in a bounded, convex polyhedron described by a director field n(r) subject to tangent boundary conditions. We derive lower bounds for the one-constant elastic energy in terms of topological invariants.…
We consider the simplest one-constant model, put forward by J. Ericksen, for nematic liquid crystals with variable degree of orientation. The equilibrium state is described by a director field $\mathbf{n}$ and its degree of orientation $s$,…
Let O be a closed geodesic polygon in S^2. Maps from O into S^2 are said to satisfy tangent boundary conditions if the edges of O are mapped into the geodesics which contain them. Taking O to be an octant of S^2, we compute the infimum…
We study global minimizers of the Landau-de Gennes (LdG) energy functional for nematic liquid crystals, on arbitrary three-dimensional simply connected geometries with topologically non-trivial and physically relevant Dirichlet boundary…
We study uniaxial energy minimizers within the Landau-de Gennes theory for nematic liquid crystals, subject to dirichlet boundary conditions. Topological defects in such minimizers correspond to the zeros of the corresponding equilibrium…
The study of singular perturbations of the Dirichlet energy is at the core of the phenomenological-description paradigm in soft condensed matter. Being able to pass to the limit plays a crucial role in the understanding of the…
We consider the question of quantitative stability of minimisers for a well-known variational problem for which the infimum of the energy is not achieved in the classical sense, namely for the Dirichlet energy of degree $1$ maps from closed…
The paper concerns the analysis of global minimizers of a Dirichlet-type energy functional in the class of $\mathbb{S}^2$-valued maps defined in cylindrical surfaces. The model naturally arises as a curved thin-film limit in the theories of…
In this note we study the boundary regularity of minimizers of a family of weak anchoring energies that model the states of liquid crystals. We establish optimal boundary regularity in all dimensions $n\geq 3 .$ In dimension $n=3,$ this…
In this paper, we deal with an obstacle placement problem inside a disk, that can be formulated as an energy minimization problem with respect to the rotations of the obstacle about its center, with respect to the translations of the…
We prove a compactness and semicontinuity result that applies to minimisation problems in nonhomogeneous linear elasticity under Dirichlet boundary conditions. This generalises a previous compactness theorem that we proved and employed to…
We obtain complete topological classification of states of nematic liquid crystal in the geometry of periodic array of rectangular posts between two parallel slabs, with tangent or normal boundary conditions. This classification has…
We study uniaxial energy-minimizers within the Landau-de Gennes theory for nematic liquid crystals on a three-dimensional spherical droplet subject to homeotropic boundary conditions. We work in the low-temperature regime and show that…
We consider $\mathbb{S}^2$-valued maps on a domain $\Omega\subset\mathbb{R}^N$ minimizing a perturbation of the Dirichlet energy with vertical penalization in $\Omega$ and horizontal penalization on $\partial\Omega$. We first show the…
We consider a constrained minimal energy problem with an external field over noncompact classes of infinite dimensional vector measures on a locally compact space. The components are positive measures (charges) that are constrained from…
In this paper we consider the problem of characterizing the minimum energy configurations of a finite system of particles interacting between them due to attracting or repulsive forces given by a certain inter molecular potential. We limit…
We derive a lower bound for energies of harmonic maps of convex polyhedra in $ \R^3 $ to the unit sphere $S^2,$ with tangent boundary conditions on the faces. We also establish that $C^\infty$ maps, satisfying tangent boundary conditions,…