Near boundary vortices in a magnetic Ginzburg-Landau model: their locations via tight energy bounds (Q849013)

A minimization problem for the Ginzburg-Landau energy in a bounded doubly connected plane domain is considered. On the boundary, the order parameter takes values in the unit circle and has degrees 0 and 1 on the inner and outer components of the boundary, respectively. It is shown that a minimizer always exists whenever \(0<\lambda < 1\), and never exist for \(\lambda \geq 1\), where \(\lambda\) is the coupling constant. When \(\lambda\to 1-0\), minimizers develop vortices located near the boundary. The limiting positions of such vortices are identified.