Global symmetry-breaking bifurcation for the van der Waals-Cahn-Hilliard model on the sphere \(S^2\) (Q282363)

This paper is concerned with the study of the global symmetry-breaking equilibria of the van der Waals-Cahn-Hilliard phase-field model on the sphere in the three-dimensional Euclidean space. After formulating the problem as the Euler-Lagrange equation for the van der Waals-Cahn-Hilliard potential energy functional, the authors establish the equivalence of the nonlinear elliptic boundary value problem to an operator equation for the zeros of a compact vector field. Next it is studied the linearized problem and there are established necessary conditions for bifurcation, which involve high-dimensional null spaces. The authors apply methods of local and global symmetry-breaking bifurcation techniques to obtain the existence of numerous global bifurcating solution branches of various symmetry types. Section 5 deals with \textit{a priori} bounds for all solutions of the problem. A crucial step is that in such a way it is eliminated one of the Rabinowitz alternatives, showing that all global solutions branches are bounded. In the final section of this paper there are we considered two special families of bifurcating solutions, namely axisymmetric and sectorial. In both cases it is proved the separation of solution branches, which implies the existence of global branches of solutions within each appropriate fixed-point space. The proofs strongly rely on symmetry methods combined with global bifurcation techniques.