Higher energy solutions in the theory of phase transitions: A variational approach (Q5929073)

Let \(\Omega\) be a smooth bounded domain in \({\mathbb R}^2\). The paper deals with the study of the elliptic system \(-\varepsilon^2\Delta u+\nabla W(u)=0\) in \(\Omega\), subject to the Neumann boundary condition \(\partial u/\partial\nu =0\) on \(\partial\Omega\), where \(\varepsilon >0\) is a small parameter and \(W:{\mathbb{R}}^2 \rightarrow {\mathbb{R}}^+\) is a triple well potential. This equation is modeled on the Ginzburg-Landau system and it becomes the Euler-Lagrange equation of the energy functional \(E_\varepsilon (u)=\int_\Omega (\frac{\varepsilon}{2}|\nabla u|^2+ \frac{1}{\varepsilon}W(u))dx\). By using a linking argument the authors establish the existence of a higher-energy solution of the above equation. There are also made in the paper several considerations on the dynamics of the negative gradient flow. In particular, it is used the Conley index to construct a suitable one-dimensional invariant set. The paper is an interesting contribution in the field and the reviewer believes that the techniques applied in this work can be applied for the treatment of other semilinear elliptic systems.