On a variant of the Ginzburg-Landau energy (Q1378418)

Let \(G\) be a smooth, bounded and simply connected domain in \({\mathbb{R}}^2\). Fix a \(C^1\) boundary data \(g:\partial G\rightarrow S^1\) with \(\text{deg} (g,\partial G)=d>0\). Let \(H^1_g\) be the class of all functions \(u\in H^1(G;\mathbb{R}^2)\) such that \(u=g\) on \(\partial G\). The authors study the behaviour as \(\varepsilon \rightarrow 0\) of minimizers of the Ginzburg-Landau functional \[ E_\varepsilon (u)=\int_G|\nabla u|^2 + (2\varepsilon^2)^{-1}\int_Gf(|u|^2)(1-|u|^2)^2, \] with respect to the class \(H^1_g\). Here, \(f\) is a smooth nonnegative function having a finite number of zeros in \([0,1]\). We point out that the case \(f\equiv 1\) corresponds to the usual Ginzburg-Landau energy. The main result of this paper asserts that if \( u_{\varepsilon_n}\) are minimizers of \( E_{\varepsilon_n}\) then there exists a subsequence of \(\varepsilon_n\rightarrow 0\) and exactly \(d\) points \(a_1, \dots ,a_d\in G\) such that the corresponding sequence of minimizers converges in \(H^1_{\text{loc}}(\overline G \setminus\{a_1,\dots ,a_d\})\). Moreover, the configuration \(a=(a_1,\dots ,a_d)\) is a global minimum point of a certain function (the so-called renormalized energy) among all configurations of \(d\) points in \(G\). The paper gives an answer to a problem raised by Brezis related to the minimization of a Ginzburg-Landau type functional involving a vanishing weight.