Phase field models for thin elastic structures with topological constraint (Q512210)

The authors consider a diffuse interface approximation of a variational problem arising in the study of thin elastic structures. They appreciate that this question is motivated by the problem of predicting the shape of certain biological objects, such as mitochondria, which consist of an elastic lipid bilayer and are confined by an additional outer mitochondrial membrane of significantly smaller surface area. The description of the locally optimal shape of thin elastic structures is based on suitable bending energies. An example of such a variational characterisation of biomembranes is provided by the Helfrich functional. Another concern of the study is to give some extensions of the Helfrich-type functionals to more general forms and, also, to minimise Willmore's energy in the class of connected \(C^2\)-surfaces which are embedded into a domain such that the embedding has prescribed surface area \(S>0\). This problem does not necessarily admit a solution, but a minimiser exists in the varifold closure of these surfaces. We find also an introduction to phase fields for Willmore's problem in general and an approach to connectedness for the transition layers. The authors proceed to show the convergence of their functionals, to show convergence of the phase fields, Hausdorff-convergence of the transition layers, and connectedness of the support of the limit measure. Finally, the authors show numerical evidence of the effectiveness and efficiency of their approach and compare it to diffuse Willmore flow in two dimensions without a topological term.