Landau-de Gennes model of liquid crystals and critical wave number (Q1404755)

Let \(\Omega\) be a simply connected bounded domain in \(\mathbb R^3\) with smooth boundary. Consider the Landau-de Gennes energy functional \[ {\mathcal L}[\Psi, \vec n]=\int_\Omega\left\{c| \nabla_{q\vec n}\Psi| ^2+{\mathcal F}_A(| \Psi| )+{\mathcal F}_N(\vec n,\nabla \vec n)\right\}dx, \] where \({\mathcal F}_A(| \Psi| )\) and \({\mathcal F}_N(\vec n,\nabla \vec n)\) denote the smectic energy density and the nematic Oseen-Frank energy density, respectively, \(c\) is a real constant, and \(\nabla_{q\vec n}\Psi=\nabla\Psi-iq\vec n\Psi\). The paper is devoted to the variational study of the above energy functional, under Dirichlet or Neumann boundary conditions. Problems of this type describe phase transitions of liquid crystals and have been intensively studied in the last decades. The main results of the paper are related to the following topics: (i) the effect of the physical parameters in the behaviour of minimizers; (ii) the bifurcation of a smectic phase from a nematic phase, in connection with the critical wave number \(Q_{c_3}\); (iii) the behaviour of minimizers with small chirality and large elastic coefficients; (iv) the key role of the consistency between the boundary data and the domain geometry for the asymptotic analysis of minimizers. Further, applications to other mathematical models and some open problems are also formulated in the present paper.