Global weak solutions to the equations of compressible flow of nematic liquid crystals in two dimensions (Q466787)

The authors prove the global existence of weak solutions to the 2-dimensional problem from nematic liquid crystals \[ \partial_t\rho +\text{div}(\rho \mathbf{v})=0, \] \[ \partial_t(\rho \mathbf{v}) +\text{div}(\rho \mathbf{v}\otimes \mathbf{v})=\mu \triangle \mathbf{v}+(\mu+\lambda)\nabla\text{div} \mathbf{v}-\nu \text{div}(\nabla \mathbf{d} \odot \nabla\mathbf{d}-\frac{1}{2}|\nabla\mathbf{d}|^2\mathbb{I}), \] \[ \partial_t\mathbf{d}+\mathbf{v}\cdot \nabla \mathbf{d}=\theta (\triangle \mathbf{d}+|\nabla\mathbf{d}|^2\mathbf{d}) \] in \(\Omega\subset \mathbb{R}^2\), where \(\mathbf{d}\in \mathbb{S}^1\equiv\{\mathbf{d}\in \mathbb{R}^2||\mathbf{d}|=1\},\mathbb{I}\) is the \(2\times 2\) identical matrix, the term \(\nabla \mathbf{d} \odot \nabla\mathbf{d}\) denotes the \(2\times 2\) matrix, whose \((i,j)\)-th entry is given by \(\partial_{x_i}\mathbf{d}\cdot \partial_{x_j}\mathbf{d}\) for \(1\leq i,j \leq 2\), that is \(\nabla \mathbf{d} \odot \nabla\mathbf{d}=(\nabla \mathbf{d})^T \nabla\mathbf{d}\), with the initial conditions \[ \rho(\mathbf{x},0)=\rho_0(\mathbf{x}),\mathbf{d}(\mathbf{x},0)=\mathbf{d}_0(\mathbf{x}), (\rho \mathbf{v},\mathbf{d})(\mathbf{x},0)=\mathbf{m}_0(\mathbf{x}) \;\; \text{in}\;\;\Omega \] and the boundary conditions \[ \mathbf{d}(\mathbf{x},t)=\mathbf{d}_0(\mathbf{x}),\mathbf{v}(\mathbf{x},t)=0,\mathbf{x}\in \partial \Omega, t>0 \] if \(\Omega\) is a bounded domain \[ (\rho,\mathbf{v},\mathbf{d})(\mathbf{x},t)\to (\rho_{\infty},0,\mathbf{e}_2) \] as \(|\mathbf{x}|\to \infty, \partial \Omega=\mathbb{R}^2, \mathbf{e}_2=(0,1)^T\) is the unit vector.