A multi-phase transition model for dislocations with interfacial microstructure (Q924040)

This paper deals with the asymptotic behavior of the functionals corresponding to the model proposed by Koslowski and Ortiz for planar dislocations in crystals. The variational problem is a two-dimensional multi-phase transition-type energy given by a nonlocal term and a nonlinear potential which penalizes the non-integer values of the components of the phase. In the limit, by means of \(\Gamma\)-convergence, the authors obtain an anisotropic sharp-interfaces model which present a relevant difference with respect to the scalar case: the optimal sequences are not merely one-dimensional interfaces, but they can arrange in complex patterns, strongly depending on the normal to the singular set of the slip fields.