Asymptotics for the Ginzburg-Landau equation in arbitrary dimensions (Q5955075)

Let \(\Omega\) be a bounded, simply connected domain in \({\mathbb R}^N\) (\(N\geq 2\)) with smooth boundary. For any \(\varepsilon\in (0,1)\), let \(u_\varepsilon : \Omega\rightarrow {\mathbb C}\) be an arbitrary smooth solution of the Ginzburg-Landau system \(-\Delta u_\varepsilon =\varepsilon^{-2}u_\varepsilon (1-| u_\varepsilon | ^2)\) in \(\Omega\), subject to the Dirichlet boundary condition \(u_\varepsilon =g_\varepsilon\) on \(\partial\Omega\), where \(g_\varepsilon :\partial\Omega\rightarrow S^1\) is a prescribed smooth mapping. The authors develop a careful asymptotic analysis of \(u_\varepsilon\) as \(\varepsilon\rightarrow 0\), under the basic assumption \(E_\varepsilon (u_\varepsilon )\leq M_0| \ln\varepsilon | \), where \(E_\varepsilon\) denotes the energy functional associated to the above problem. The assumptions imposed to \(g_\varepsilon\) allow the presence of a manifold of singularities of dimension \(N-3\) on \(\partial\Omega\). The first main result of the paper can be summarized as follows: for a subsequence \(\varepsilon_n\rightarrow 0\), there exist \(u_*\in W^{1,p}(\Omega)\) and \(g_*\in W^{1,p}(\partial\Omega )\) such that (i) \(| u_*| =1\) on \(\Omega\), \(| g_*| =1\), \(u_*=g_*\) on \(\partial\Omega\); (ii) \(u_{\varepsilon_n}\rightarrow u_*\) in \(W^{1,p}(\Omega )\), \(g_{\varepsilon_n}\rightarrow g_*\) in \(W^{1,p}(\partial\Omega )\); (iii) div\(\,(u_*\times\nabla u_*)=0\) in \(\Omega\). The proof is based on refined \(W^{1,p}\) elliptic estimates, regularity theory for elliptic problems, arguments of geometric measure theory, or a basic monotonicity formula. Next, the authors prove that if \(u_\varepsilon\) is a solution of the Ginzburg-Landau system in \(B_1\) and \(E_\varepsilon (u_\varepsilon )\leq\eta | \ln\varepsilon | \) then \(u_\varepsilon (0)\geq 1-K\eta^\alpha\), where \(K>0\) and \(\alpha >0\) depend only on \(N\). The proof uses the \(\eta\)-ellipticity theorem, which bounds \(| u_\varepsilon | \) away from zero as soon as the local energy is bounded by \(\eta | \ln\varepsilon | \) with \(\eta\) small. The paper is very well written and contains deep results on the Ginzburg-Landau equation in arbitrary dimension. There are very powerful tools developed for the treatment of special classes of nonlinear elliptic problems and the paper combines arguments from various fields of mathematics.