Anisotropic surface tensions for phase transitions in periodic media (Q2127346)

The authors consider the Allen-Cahn energy functional \(\mathcal{F} _{\varepsilon }:H^{1}(\Omega )\rightarrow \lbrack 0,\infty ]\) defined as \( \mathcal{F}_{\varepsilon }(u)=\int_{\Omega }[\frac{1}{\varepsilon }a(\frac{x }{\varepsilon })W(u)+\frac{\varepsilon }{2}\left\vert \nabla u\right\vert ^{2}]dx\), where \(\Omega \sqsubseteq \mathbb{R}^{N}\), \(N\geq 2\), is a Lipschitz domain, \(a:\mathbb{R}^{N}\rightarrow \mathbb{R}\) is a continuous, strictly positive and \(\mathbb{T}^{N}\)-periodic function, \(\mathbb{T}^{N}\) being the standard \(N\)-dimensional torus, which satisfies \(0<\theta \leq a(x)\leq \Theta \), for all \(x\in \mathbb{R}^{N}\), and \(W\) is the double-well potential \(W(u)=(1-u^{2})^{2}\). The authors recall some homogenization results concerning this functional. They introduce the anisotropic surface energy \(\sigma :\mathbb{S}^{N-1}\rightarrow \lbrack 0,\infty )\) through the cell formula \(\sigma (\nu )=\lim_{T\rightarrow \infty }\frac{1}{T^{N-1}}\inf \{\int_{TQ_{\nu }}[a(y)W(u)+\frac{1}{2}\left\vert \nabla u\right\vert ^{2}]dy:u\in C(TQ_{\nu })\}\), where \(C(TQ_{\nu })=u\in \{H^{1}(TQ_{\nu }):u=\rho \ast u_{0,\nu }\) on \(\partial (TQ_{\nu })\}\), with \(u_{0,\nu }(y)=-1\) if \(x\cdot \nu \leq 0\), and \(u_{0,\nu }(y)=1\) if \(x\cdot \nu >0\), and \(\rho \in C_{c}^{\infty }(B(0,1))\), with \(0\leq \rho \leq 1\), and \(\int_{ \mathbb{R}^{N}}\rho (x)dx=1\). They also introduce the function \(q:\mathbb{R} \rightarrow \mathbb{R}\) defined by \(q(z)=\tanh (\sqrt{2}z)\), \(z\in \mathbb{R} \), and for \(\nu \in \mathbb{S}^{N-1}\), they define \underline{\(\lambda \)}\( (\nu )=\lim \inf_{T\rightarrow \infty }\frac{1}{T^{N}}\int_{TQ_{\nu }}[a(y)W(q\circ h_{\nu })+\frac{1}{2}2\left\vert \nabla (q\circ h_{\nu })\right\vert ^{2}]dy\) and \(\overline{\lambda }(\nu )=\lim \sup_{T\rightarrow \infty }\frac{1}{T^{N}}\int_{TQ_{\nu }}[a(y)W(q\circ h_{\nu })+\frac{1}{2}2\left\vert \nabla (q\circ h_{\nu }\right\vert ^{2}]dy\) , where \(h_{\nu }(y)=sign(y\cdot \nu )\inf_{z\in \Sigma _{\nu }}d_{\sqrt{a} }(y,z)\), \(\Sigma _{\nu }=\{x\in \mathbb{R}^{N}:x\cdot \nu =0\}\). The first main result proves the existence of a universal constant \(\Lambda _{0}>0\) and of \(\lambda _{0}:\mathbb{S}^{N-1}\rightarrow \lbrack 0,\Lambda _{0}]\) such that \(\overline{\lambda }(\nu )-\lambda _{0}(\nu )\leq \sigma (\nu )\leq \underline{\lambda }(\nu )\). The second main result proves that for each \(\nu \in \mathbb{S}^{N-1}\), there exists a unique \(c(\nu )\in \lbrack \sqrt{\theta },\sqrt{\Theta }]\) such that for every compact \(K\sqsubseteq \mathbb{R}^{N}\), \(\lim_{T\rightarrow \infty }\sup_{x\in K}\left\vert \frac{1}{T}h_{\nu }(Tx)-c(\nu )(x\cdot \nu )\right\vert =0\), and \(c(\nu )=c(-\nu )\). The authors finally also prove a similar result if \(a:\mathbb{R} ^{N}\rightarrow \mathbb{R}\) is a Bohr almost periodic function. For the proof of the first main result, the authors use the standard De Giorgi slicing technique that they recall in an Appendix to prove the upper bound. For the proof of the lower bound, they choose \(\phi =\sqrt{2}\int_{0}^{z} \sqrt{W(s)}ds\) and they prove properties of the function \(h_{\nu }\) in connection with the signed distance \(d_{\sqrt{a}}(y_{1},y_{2})=\inf_{\gamma (0)=y_{1},\gamma (1)=y_{2}}\int_{0}^{1}\sqrt{a(\gamma (t))}\left\vert \overset{.}{\gamma }(t)\right\vert dt\), where \(\gamma \) is a Lipschitz curve \([0,1]\rightarrow \mathbb{R}^{N}\). For the proof of the second and third main results, the authors prove further properties of the function \(h_{\nu }\) and of Bohr almost periodic functions for the third result.