No label defined (Q4938339)

Let \(\Omega\) be a simply connected bounded domain in \(\mathbb{R}^2\). It is interesting to study the map \(g:\partial\Omega\to S^1\) admitting no harmonic extension in \(\Omega\) with values into the unit sphere \(S^1\). It corresponds to study the case that \(g\) admits no regular extension or equivalently no finite \(W^{1,2}\)-energy extension in \(S^1\). That is the degree of \(g\) is nonzero in this case, \(\deg g= d\neq 0\). To get a natural object that the authors replace the harmonic extension in this meaning, they study the limit of sequences of minimizers or of critical points of the Ginzburg-Landau functional \(E_\varepsilon(u)\) in dimension \(2\), where \[ E_\varepsilon(u)= \int_\Omega|\nabla u|^2+{1\over 2\varepsilon^2} \int_\Omega(1-|u|^2)^2 \] which is defined for maps \(u:\Omega\to C\) such that \(u|_{\partial\Omega}= g:\partial\Omega\to S^1\). In this article, the authors try to understand more precisely the critical points of \(E_\varepsilon\) and the critical points of the map \(W\) (where \(W:\Omega\to \mathbb{R}\)). The authors give a precisely convergent behavior of a sequence of critical points \(\{u_n\}\) of \(E_{\varepsilon_n}\) as \(\varepsilon\) approaches to zero and they establish the uniqueness result for the sequence of minimizers. Moreover, they give a partial answer to a conjecture of F. Bethuel, H. Brezia, and F. Helein, which is that the minimizer \(u\) of \(E_\varepsilon\) is axially symmetric. That is, \(u\) can be written as the product of \(e^{i\theta}\) by a function \(r\). For the entire collection see [Zbl 0927.00036].