Existence and stability of kayaking orbits for nematic liquid crystals in simple shear flow (Q2065725)

This paper concerns the so-called \(Q\)-tensor model \[ \dot{Q}=G(Q)+\omega(WQ-QW)+\beta \mathbf {L} (Q)D,\; Q \in V, \tag{1} \] for unsteady dynamical responses of nematic liquid crystals to steady shear flow. It is an autonomous ODE in the 5-dimensional space \(V\) of symmetric and traceless real \(5\times 5\)-matrices \(Q\). In (1) the vorticity tensor \(W\), the rate-of-strain tensor \(D\) and the rotational coefficient \(\omega\) are fixed, the rate of molecular interaction \(\beta\approx 0\) is the bifurcation parameter, and \(G(Q) \in V\) and \(\mathbf{L}(Q) \in \mathcal{L}(V)\) are given nonlinearities. It is supposed that \(RG(Q)=G(RQ)\) for all \(R \in SO(3)\) and \(Q\in V\) and that there exists \(Q^* \in V\) such that \(G(Q^*)=0\) and \(WQ^*=Q^*W\). Then any element of the group orbit \(\{RQ^*: R \in SO(3)\}\) is a relative equilibrium to (1) with \(\beta=0\). All but one of these relative equilibria represent so-called kayaking regimes, i.e. regimes, for which the nematic director is transverse to the plane of the shear flow and rotates around the vorticity axis. The goal of the paper is to prove that some members of the family of relative equilibria survive (as periodic solutions to (1)) under the symmetry-breaking perturbation \(\beta \mathbf{L}(Q)D\) with small, but non-zero \(\beta\), and to show which of them are stable. There are presented explicit criteria on the coefficients of several models of \(\mathbf{L}(Q)\) (Olmsted-Golbart model, Beris-Edwards model) for existence and stability of those surviving periodic solutions. The authors use tools of general bifurcation theory (implicit function theorem, Lyapunov-Schmidt reduction, principle of reduced stability, Poincaré map) as well as from equivariant bifurcation theory (rotation coordinates, Veronese map, isotopic decomposition).