Related papers: Liquid crystals and harmonic maps in polyhedral do…
We consider the problem of minimizing convex combinations of the first two eigenvalues of the Dirichlet-Laplacian among open sets of $R^N$ of fixed measure. We show that, by purely elementary arguments, based on the minimality condition, it…
In this paper, we consider the Dirichlet problem of inhomogeneous incompressible nematic liquid crystal equations in bounded smooth domains of two or three dimensions. We prove the global existence and uniqueness of strong solutions with…
Liquid crystal droplets are of great interest from physics and applications. Rigorous mathematical analysis is challenging as the problem involves harmonic maps (and in general the Oseen-Frank model), free interfaces and topological defects…
Here we discuss the free energy of nematic liquid crystals using two vectors and the helicity, with the aim of having a compact form of its density. The two vectors are due to the splay and bend distortions of the director field. They have…
Let $\mathbb{A}=\{z: r< |z|<R\}$ and $\A^\ast=\{z: r^\ast<|z|<R^\ast\}$ be annuli in the complex plane. Let $p\in[1,2]$ and assume that $\mathcal{H}^{1,p}(\A,\A^*)$ is the class of Sobolev homeomorphisms between $\A$ and $\A^*$, $h:\A\onto…
The study deals with a minimal energy problem over noncompact classes of infinite dimensional vector measures in a locally compact space. The components are positive measures (charges) satisfying certain normalizing assumptions and…
We present nonlinear dynamic equations for nematic and smectic $A$ liquid crystals in the presence of an alternating electric field and explain their derivation in detail. The local electric field acting in any liquid-crystalline system is…
We consider a one-dimensional variational problem arising in connection with a model for cholesteric liquid crystals. The principal feature of our study is the assumption that the twist deformation of the nematic director incurs much higher…
Nematic liquid crystals exhibit configurations in which the underlying ordering changes markedly on macroscopic length scales. Such structures include topological defects in the nematic phase and tactoids within nematic-isotropic…
The central theme in this paper is the Hopf-Laplace equation, which represents stationary solutions with respect to the inner variation of the Dirichlet integral. Among such solutions are harmonic maps. Nevertheless, minimization of the…
The variational problem for the functional $F=\frac12\|\phi^*\omega\|_{L^2}^2$ is considered, where $\phi:(M,g)\to (N,\omega)$ maps a Riemannian manifold to a symplectic manifold. This functional arises in theoretical physics as the strong…
We give a necessary and sufficient condition, of geometric type, for the uniform decay of energy of solutions of the linear system of magnetoelasticity in a bounded domain with smooth boundary. A Dirichlet-type boundary condition is…
Using computer simulations we investigate the microscopic structure of the singular director field within a nematic droplet. As a theoretical model for nematic liquid crystals we take hard spherocylinders. To induce an overall topological…
In this paper we deal with the existence, regularity and Beltrami field property of magnetic energy minimisers under a helicity constraint. We in particular tackle the problem of characterising local as well as global minimisers of the…
Given a topological cell decomposition of a closed surface equipped with edge weights, we consider the Dirichlet energy of any geodesic realization of the 1-skeleton graph to a hyperbolic surface. By minimizing the energy over all possible…
Some variational problems for a Foppl-von Karman plate subject to general equilibrated loads are studied. The existence of global minimizers is proved under the assumption that the out-of-plane displacement fulfils homogeneous Dirichlet…
We show that, for a fixed order $\gamma\geq 1$, each local minimizer of a rather general nonsmooth optimization problem in Euclidean spaces is either M-stationary in the classical sense (corresponding to stationarity of order $1$),…
We prove that the zero set of a minimizer of the modified Ericksen energy for nematic liquid crystals with variable degree of orientation consists locally of isolated points and a finite union of H\"older continuous curves with only…
Various director configurations of a nematic liquid crystal, confined in a toroidal volume and subject to an external magnetic field, were evaluated numerically by performing finite element calculations in three dimensions. The equilibrium…
The energy of any $C^1$ representative of a homotopy class of maps from a compact and connected Riemannian manifold with nonnegative Ricci curvature into a complete Riemannian manifold with no conjugate points is bounded below by a constant…