Ginzburg--Landau minimizers with prescribed degrees: Dependence on domain. (Q1414790)

This paper is devoted to the study of some properties related to the Ginzburg-Landau energy functional in a domain with holes. Denote \(A=\Omega\setminus (\cup_{j=0}^k\omega_j)\), where \(\Omega\) and \(\omega_j\) (\(j=0,\ldots ,k\)) are simply connected bounded smooth domains such that, for all \(j\), \(\omega_j\) is strictly contained in \(\Omega\) and \(\omega_i\) and \(\omega_j\) are mutually disjoint, for any \(i\not=j\). Let \({\mathcal K}\) be the class of all functions \(u\in H^1(A; {\mathbb R}^2)\) such that \(| u| =1\) a.e. on \(\partial A\), deg\((u,\partial\Omega )=1\), deg\((u,\partial\omega_0 )=-1\), deg\((u,\partial\omega_j )=0\), for all \(j=1,\dots ,k\). Consider the minimization problem \[ m_\kappa =\inf\left\{\frac 12\int_A| \nabla u| ^2+\frac{\kappa^2}{4}\int_A(1-| u| ^2)^2;\;u\in{\mathcal K}\right\}. \] The purpose of this paper is to answer the following questions related to the above minimization problem: (i) is \(m_\kappa\) achieved for any \(\kappa\)?; (ii) if so, what is the behaviour of the corresponding minimizers \(u_\kappa\) as \(\kappa\rightarrow\infty\)? The proofs use refined estimates for elliptic equations combined with appropriate methods in the calculus of variations and degree theory.