Existence of critical points with semi-stiff boundary conditions for singular perturbation problems in simply connected planar domains (Q2250468)

This very important paper is devoted to the existence of critical points of the Ginzburg-Landau energy functional for small \(\varepsilon\). The approach of the authors relies on singular perturbation techniques in the spirit of Pacard and Riviere. In order to explain the main results in the case of a prescribed degree boundary condition, the authors perform an analysis of the proposed problem when \(d=1\). The prescribed degree boundary condition is an intermediate model between the Dirichlet and the Neumann boundary conditions. The paper contains the proofs of the three presented theorems, as well as generalizations to higher degrees \(d\) and a discussion about the generic nature of authors results. New useful formulas for the renormalized energies are derived. The authors prove that nondegeneracy of critical points of \(W(\cdot, g)\) is stable with respect to small perturbations of \(g\). The proof of a variant of the Pacard-Riviere construction of critical points with Dirichlet condition is given. The generic nature of the presented results is discussed.