Asymptotics for 2-dimensional vectorial Allen-Cahn systems
This paper is devoted to investigation of asymptotic properties of singularly perturbed system of elliptic equations of the form \[ -\Delta u_\varepsilon=-\varepsilon^{-2}\nabla_u V(u_\varepsilon) \] as \(\varepsilon \to 0^+\). Above, \(u_\varepsilon\) is a map from a bounded domain \(\Omega\subset \mathbb{R}^2\) to \(\mathbb{R}^k\), \(k>1\). The function \(V\colon\mathbb{R}^k\to \mathbb{R}\) is a multiple well, nonnegative and non degenerate potential. In the scalar case (i.e. \(k=1\)) and when \(V(u)=\frac{1}{4} (1-u^2)^2\) this problem is known as the Allen-Cahn equation. For this problem, as \(\varepsilon\to 0^+\), the domain \(\Omega\) decomposes into disjoint sets where \(u=\pm 1\), separated by interfaces of width \(O(\varepsilon)\). In the limit as \(\varepsilon\to 0^+\) they converge to hypersurfaces of codimension one which are generalized minimal surfaces. These results can be proven for more general nonlinearities \(V\). The present paper shows that this intuitive picture is still true in the vectorial case. This is stated in the form of three main theorems. The first of them shows that there is a one dimensional, rectifiable set such that outside of this set \(u_\varepsilon\) tends uniformly on compacts to one of the potential wells. The second theorem is about the limiting interface and states that with exception of a set of one dimensional Hausdorff measure zero this interface is a collection of line segments. Finally, it is proven that as a one dimensional rectifiable varifold this set is stationary. A important point of this paper is that it deals with solutions of the system of PDEs rather than with the minimizers of the associated energy functional. The main difficulty, as compared with the scalar case, is the lack of monotonicity formula. To overcome this new results about the singular perturbation PDE are proven to show in particular that the limiting set is at most one dimensional which is the key to prove the first theorem.
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