Dynamics of multiple degree Ginzburg-Landau vortices (Q5920447)

This paper deals with a careful asymptotic analysis as \(\varepsilon\rightarrow 0\) of the complex-valued parabolic Ginzburg-Landau equation \(\frac{\partial u_\varepsilon}{\partial t}-\Delta u_\varepsilon =\frac{1}{\varepsilon^2}u_\varepsilon (1-| u_\varepsilon | ^2)\) on \(\mathbb R^2\times \mathbb R^+\). The authors focus on the description of the asymptotic behavior of solutions as \(\varepsilon\rightarrow 0\), under the only assumption that the initial datum \(u^0_\varepsilon (\cdot )\equiv u_\varepsilon (\cdot ,0)\) verifies \(E_\varepsilon (u^0_\varepsilon )\leq M_0| \log\varepsilon | \), where \(E_\varepsilon\) stands for the associated energy functional. The main result of this paper provides a complete description of the trajectory set, in the sense that, asymptotically, vortices evolve according to a simple ordinary differential equation, which is a gradient flow of the Kirchhoff-Onsager functional, defined as \(W(a_1,\ldots ,a_n)=-2\sum_{i\not=j=1}^nd_id_j\log | a_i-a_j| \). Next, the authors study the asymptotic behavior of the trajectories near a branching point and show that, after a suitable parabolic rescaling centered at the collision point, vortices converge to the set of critical points of \(W\) restricted to a certain prescribed manifold. The proofs are based on powerful asymptotic estimates combined with original analytic arguments.