Symmetry breaking and restoration in the Ginzburg-Landau model of nematic liquid crystals

DOI10.1007/S00332-018-9442-5zbMATH Open1395.35010arXiv1706.03134OpenAlexW2626236121WikidataQ113107630 ScholiaQ113107630MaRDI QIDQ722015FDOQ722015

Michal Kowalczyk, Panayotis Smyrnelis, M. G. Clerc

Publication date: 20 July 2018

Published in: Journal of Nonlinear Science (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: In this paper we study qualitative properties of global minimizers of the Ginzburg-Landau energy which describes light-matter interaction in the theory of nematic liquid crystals near the Friedrichs transition. This model is depends on two parameters: $epsilon>0$ which is small and represents the coherence scale of the system and $ageq0$ which represents the intensity of the applied laser light. In particular we are interested in the phenomenon of symmetry breaking as $a$ and $epsilon$ vary. We show that when $a=0$ the global minimizer is radially symmetric and unique and that its symmetry is instantly broken as $a>0$ and then restored for sufficiently large values of $a$. Symmetry breaking is associated with the presence of a new type of topological defect which we named the shadow vortex. The symmetry breaking scenario is a rigorous confirmation of experimental and numerical results obtained in our earlier work.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.03134

zbMATH Keywords

vortexglobal minimizers of the Ginzburg-Landau energy

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Oscillation, zeros of solutions, mean value theorems, etc. in context of PDEs (35B05) Liquid crystals (76A15) Symmetries, invariants, etc. in context of PDEs (35B06) Singular perturbations in context of PDEs (35B25) Variational methods for second-order elliptic equations (35J20) Ginzburg-Landau equations (35Q56)

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Cited In (5)

• Vortex-filament solutions in the Ginzburg-Landau-Painlevé theory of phase transition
• Uniaxial symmetry in nematic liquid crystals
• The connecting solution of the Painlevé phase transition model
• Gradient theory of domain walls in thin, nematic liquid crystals films
• Breaking the hidden symmetry in the Ginzburg-Landau equation

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