Periodic phases in second-order materials (Q1288791)

The title of this paper is misleading because the notion of ``second-order'' materials is not uniquely accepted. Here the authors are in fact dealing with a material whose energy density depends not only on density and its first spatial gradients (like in some approaches to capillarity), but also on the second gradient of density. These would be called third-order gradient materials because in a solid they would involve the third gradient of the displacement in the energy density. The strict dependence of energy on density is taken as a symmetric double-well potential. The authors examine periodic solutions that are minimizers of the given functional in one space dimension. Such minimizers, following works by \textit{L. Tartar} [see e.g. Meccanica 30, No. 5, 505-526 (1995; Zbl 0835.73062)] are Young measures. In the paper the authors describe recent progress on this unconstrained variational problem. Firstly, fairly sharp upper and lower bounds on the minimal value of the functional are obtained. Then two global symmetry properties of periodic minimizers are proved. The authors construct two specific families of small and large periodic solutions in order to obtain an understanding of the nature of periodic minimizers. Such families are sufficiently close in energy to the equilibrium state, so that they are expected to provide a good picture of periodic equilibrium states of the stated problem. The present work extends the analysis of \textit{L. A. Peletier} and \textit{W. C. Troy} [SIAM J. Math. Anal. 28, No. 6, 1317-1353 (1997; Zbl 0891.34048)] of periodic stationary states of the so-called Fisher-Kolmogorov equation (a nonlinear evolution-diffusion equation including a fourth-order space derivative with the appropriate sign). Similar problems also arise in the study of wavelength selection in cellular flows and in that of incommensurate phases. In spite of these comments, the style of the paper is strictly mathematical.