From the Q-tensor flow for the liquid crystal to the harmonic map flow (Q2014376)

This interesting paper is related to liquid crystals (that combine properties of a conventional liquid and properties of a solid crystal). The main result states that the solution \(Q_{\varepsilon}\) of the relaxed \(Q\)-tensor flow in \(\mathbb{R}^3\) with a small parameter \(\varepsilon >0\) (see \((1.4)\) on page 665 of the paper) converges as \(\varepsilon \rightarrow 0^+\) (on a subsequence) to the harmonic map flow \(Q\) which is a weak solution of \((1.11)\). Thus the authors provide additionally a new proof for the global existence for the harmonic map flow in 3D.