Function Spaces for Liquid Crystals

We consider the relationship between three continuum liquid crystal theories: Oseen–Frank, Ericksen and Landau–de Gennes. It is known that the function space is an important part of the mathematical model and by considering various function space choices for the order parameters s, n, and Q, we establish connections between the variational formulations of these theories. We use these results to justify a version of the Oseen–Frank theory using special functions of bounded variation. This proposed model can describe both orientable and non-orientable defects. Finally we study a number of frustrated nematic and cholesteric liquid crystal systems and show that the model predicts the existence of point and surface discontinuities in the director.     

Minimizers of the Landau–de Gennes Energy Around a Spherical Colloid Particle

We consider energy minimizing configurations of a nematic liquid crystal around a spherical colloid particle, in the context of the Landau–de Gennes model. The nematic is assumed to occupy the exterior of a ball B_r0, and satisfy homeotropic weak anchoring at the surface of the colloid and approach a uniform uniaxial state as \({|x|\to\infty}\). We study the minimizers in two different limiting regimes: for balls which are small \({r_0\ll L^{\frac12}}\) compared to the characteristic length scale \({L^{\frac 12}}\), and for large balls, \({r_0\gg L^{\frac12}}\). The relationship between the radius and the anchoring strength W is also relevant. For small balls we obtain a limiting quadrupolar configuration, with a “Saturn ring” defect for relatively strong anchoring, corresponding to an exchange of eigenvalues of the Q-tensor. In the limit of very large balls we obtain an axisymmetric minimizer of the Oseen–Frank energy, and a dipole configuration with exactly one point defect is obtained.     

An Eulerian–Lagrangian Form for the Euler Equations in Sobolev Spaces

In 2000 Constantin showed that the incompressible Euler equations can be written in an “Eulerian–Lagrangian” form which involves the back-to-labels map (the inverse of the trajectory map for each fixed time). In the same paper a local existence result is proved in certain Hölder spaces \({C^{1,\mu}}\). We review the Eulerian–Lagrangian formulation of the equations and prove that given initial data in H ^s for \({n \geq 2}\) and \({s > \frac{n}{2}+1}\), a unique local-in-time solution exists on the n-torus that is continuous into H ^s and C ¹ into H ^s-1. These solutions automatically have C ¹ trajectories. The proof here is direct and does not appeal to results already known about the classical formulation. Moreover, these solutions are regular enough that the classical and Eulerian–Lagrangian formulations are equivalent, therefore what we present amounts to an alternative approach to some of the standard theory.     

Multipulse Phases in k-Mixtures of Bose–Einstein Condensates

For the system

$-\Delta U_i+ U_i=U_i^3-\beta U_i\sum_{j\neq i}U_j^2,\quad i=1,\dots,k,$

(with k ≧ 3), we prove the existence for β large of positive radial solutions on \({\mathbb R^N}\) . We show that as β →  + ∞, the profile of each component U _i separates, in many pulses, from the others. Moreover, we can prescribe the location of such pulses in terms of the oscillations of the changing-sign solutions of the scalar equation  ? ΔW  +  W  =  W³. Within an Hartree–Fock approximation, this provides a theoretical indication of phase separation into many nodal domains for the k-mixtures of Bose–Einstein condensates.

     

Smooth positon solutions of the focusing modified Korteweg–de Vries equation

The n-fold Darboux transformation \(T_{n}\) of the focusing real modified Korteweg–de Vries (mKdV) equation is expressed in terms of the determinant representation. Using this representation, the n-soliton solutions of the mKdV equation are also expressed by determinants whose elements consist of the eigenvalues \(\lambda _{j}\) and the corresponding eigenfunctions of the associated Lax equation. The nonsingular n-positon solutions of the focusing mKdV equation are obtained in the special limit \(\lambda _{j}\rightarrow \lambda _{1}\), from the corresponding n-soliton solutions and by using the associated higher-order Taylor expansion. Furthermore, the decomposition method of the n-positon solution into n single-soliton solutions, the trajectories, and the corresponding “phase shifts” of the multi-positons are also investigated.     

Biorthogonal stretching and shearing of an impermeable surface in a uniformly rotating fluid system

The flow induced by an impermeable flat surface executing orthogonal stretching and orthogonal shearing in a rotating fluid system is investigated. Both the stretching and shearing are linear in the coordinates. An exact similarity reduction of the Navier–Stokes equations gives rise to a pair of nonlinearly-coupled ordinary differential equations governed by three parameters. In this study we set one parameter and analyze the problem which leads to flow for an impermeable surface with shearing and stretching due to velocity u along the x-axis of equal strength a while the shearing and stretching due to velocity v along the y-axis of equal strength b. These solutions depend on two parameters—a Coriolis (rotation) parameter \(\sigma = \Omega /a\) and a stretching/shearing ratio \(\lambda =b/a\). A symmetry in solutions is found for \(\lambda = 1\). The exact solution for \(\sigma = 0\) and the asymptotic behavior of solutions for \(|\sigma | \rightarrow \infty\) are determined and compared with numerical results. Oscillatory solutions are found whose strength increases with increasing values of \(|\sigma |\). It is shown that these solutions tend to the well-known Ekman solution as \(|\sigma | \rightarrow \infty\).     

Beltrami Fields with a Nonconstant Proportionality Factor are Rare

We consider the existence of Beltrami fields with a nonconstant proportionality factor f in an open subset U of \({\mathbb{R}^3}\). By reformulating this problem as a constrained evolution equation on a surface, we find an explicit differential equation that f must satisfy whenever there is a nontrivial Beltrami field with this factor. This ensures that there are no nontrivial regular solutions for an open and dense set of factors f in the C^k topology, \({k\geqq 7}\). In particular, there are no nontrivial Beltrami fields whenever f has a regular level set diffeomorphic to the sphere. This provides an explanation of the helical flow paradox of Morgulis et al. (Commun Pure Appl Math 48:571–582, 1995).     

Stability of Traveling Waves of Nonlinear Schrödinger Equation with Nonzero Condition at Infinity

We study effective elastic behavior of the incompatibly prestrained thin plates, where the prestrain is independent of thickness and uniform through the plate’s thickness h. We model such plates as three-dimensional elastic bodies with a prescribed pointwise stress-free state characterized by a Riemannian metric G, and seek the limiting behavior as \({h \to 0}\). We first establish that when the energy per volume scales as the second power of h, the resulting \({\Gamma}\) -limit is a Kirchhoff-type bending theory. We then show the somewhat surprising result that there exist non-immersible metrics G for whom the infimum energy (per volume) scales smaller than h². This implies that the minimizing sequence of deformations carries nontrivial residual three-dimensional energy but it has zero bending energy as seen from the limit Kirchhoff theory perspective. Another implication is that other asymptotic scenarios are valid in appropriate smaller scaling regimes of energy. We characterize the metrics G with the above property, showing that the zero bending energy in the Kirchhoff limit occurs if and only if the Riemann curvatures R₁₂₁₃, R₁₂₂₃ and R₁₂₁₂ of G vanish identically. We illustrate our findings with examples; of particular interest is an example where \({G_{2 \times 2}}\), the two-dimensional restriction of G, is flat but the plate still exhibits the energy scaling of the Föppl–von Kármán type. Finally, we apply these results to a model of nematic glass, including a characterization of the condition when the metric is immersible, for \({G = Id_{3} + \gamma n \otimes n}\) given in terms of the inhomogeneous unit director field distribution \({ n \in \mathbb{R}^3}\).     

Bistable Boundary Reactions in Two Dimensions

In a bounded domain \({\Omega \subset \mathbb R^2}\) with smooth boundary we consider the problem

$\Delta u = 0 \quad {\rm{in }}\, \Omega, \qquad \frac{\partial u}{\partial \nu} = \frac1\varepsilon f(u) \quad {\rm{on }}\,\partial\Omega,$

where ν is the unit normal exterior vector, ε > 0 is a small parameter and f is a bistable nonlinearity such as f(u) = sin(π u) or f(u) = (1 ? u ²)u. We construct solutions that develop multiple transitions from ?1 to 1 and vice-versa along a connected component of the boundary ?Ω. We also construct an explicit solution when Ω is a disk and f(u) = sin(π u).

     

An iterative updating method for undamped structural systems

Finite element model updating is a procedure to minimize the differences between analytical and experimental results and can be mathematically reduced to solving the following problem. Problem P: Let M _a ∈SR ^n×n and K _a ∈SR ^n×n be the analytical mass and stiffness matrices and Λ=diag{λ ₁,…,λ _p }∈R ^p×p and X=[x ₁,…,x _p ]∈R ^n×p be the measured eigenvalue and eigenvector matrices, respectively. Find \((\hat{M}, \hat{K}) \in \mathcal{S}_{MK}\) such that \(\| \hat{M}-M_{a} \|^{2}+\| \hat{K}-K_{a}\|^{2}= \min_{(M,K) \in {\mathcal{S}}_{MK}} (\| M-M_{a} \|^{2}+\|K-K_{a}\|^{2})\), where \(\mathcal{S}_{MK}=\{(M,K)| X^{T}MX=I_{p}, MX \varLambda=K X \}\) and ∥?∥ is the Frobenius norm. This paper presents an iterative method to solve Problem P. By the method, the optimal approximation solution \((\hat{M}, \hat{K})\) of Problem P can be obtained within finite iteration steps in the absence of roundoff errors by choosing a special kind of initial matrix pair. A numerical example shows that the introduced iterative algorithm is quite efficient.     

Vortex solitons of the (3+1)-dimensional spatially modulated cubic–quintic nonlinear Schrödinger equation with the transverse modulation

Vortex solitons in the spatially modulated cubic–quintic nonlinear media are governed by a (3+1)-dimensional cubic–quintic nonlinear Schrödinger equation with spatially modulated nonlinearity and transverse modulation. Via the variable separation principle with the similarity transformation, we derive two families of vortex soliton solutions in the spatially modulated cubic–quintic nonlinear media. For the disappearing and parabolic transverse modulation, vortex solitons with different configurations are constructed. The similar configurations of vortex solitons exist for the same value of \(l-k\) with the topological charge k and degree number l. Moreover, the number of the inner layer structure of vortex solitons getting rid of the package covering layer is related to \((n-1)/2+1\) with the soliton order number n. For the disappearing transverse modulation, there exist phase azimuthal jumps around their cores of vortex solitons with \(2\pi \) phase change in every jump, and any two jumps one after another realize the change in \(\pi \). For the parabolic transverse modulation, all phases of vortex soliton exist k-jump, and every jump realizes the change in \(2\pi /k\); thus, k-jumps totally realize the azimuthal change in \(2\pi \) around their cores.     

Multiple Brake Orbits and Homoclinics in Riemannian Manifolds

Let (M, g) be a complete Riemannian manifold, \({\Omega\subset M}\) an open subset whose closure is homeomorphic to an annulus. We prove that if ?Ω is smooth and it satisfies a strong concavity assumption, then there are at least two distinct geodesics in \({\overline\Omega=\Omega\cup\partial\Omega}\) starting orthogonally to one connected component of ?Ω and arriving orthogonally onto the other one. Using the results given in Giambò et al. (Adv Differ Equ 10:931–960, 2005), we then obtain a proof of the existence of two distinct homoclinic orbits for an autonomous Lagrangian system emanating from a nondegenerate maximum point of the potential energy, and a proof of the existence of two distinct brake orbits for a class of Hamiltonian systems. Under a further symmetry assumption, the result is improved by showing the existence of at least dim(M) pairs of geometrically distinct geodesics as above, brake orbits and homoclinic orbits. In our proof we shall use recent deformation results proved in Giambò et al. (Nonlinear Anal Ser A: Theory Methods Appl 73:290–337, 2010).     

Entire Solutions to Equivariant Elliptic Systems with Variational Structure

We consider the system Δu ? W _u (u) = 0, where \({u : \mathbb{R}^n \to \mathbb{R}^n}\) , for a class of potentials \({W : \mathbb{R}^n \to \mathbb{R}}\) that possess several global minima and are invariant under a general finite reflection group G. We establish existence of nontrivial G-equivariant entire solutions connecting the global minima of W along certain directions at infinity.     

Consequences of the Translation Invariance on the Darcy Free Convection Flow Past a Vertical Surface

It is shown that the governing equation for the stream function of the Darcy free convection boundary layer flows past a vertical surface is invariant under arbitrary translations of the transverse coordinate y. The consequences of this basic symmetry property on the solutions corresponding to a prescribed surface temperature distribution T _w (x) are investigated. It is found that starting with a “primary solution” which describes the temperature boundary layer on an impermeable surface, infinitely many “translated solutions” can be generated which form a continuous group, the “translation group” of the given primary solution. The elements of this group describe free convection boundary layer flows from permeable counterparts of the original surface with a transformed temperature distribution \({\tilde {T}_w \left( x \right)}\), when simultaneously a suitable lateral suction/injection of the fluid is applied. It turns out in this way that several exact solutions discovered during the latter few decades are in fact not basically new solutions, but translated counterparts of some formerly reported primary solutions. A few specific examples are discussed in detail.     

On the Elastic Energy Density of Constrained Q-Tensor Models for Biaxial Nematics

Within the Landau–de Gennes theory, the order parameter describing a biaxial nematic liquid crystal assigns a symmetric traceless 3 × 3 matrix Q with three distinct eigenvalues to every point of the region Ω occupied by the system. In the constrained case of matrices Q with constant eigenvalues, the order parameter space is diffeomorphic to the eightfold quotient ${\mathbb{S}^3/\mathcal{H}}$ of the 3-sphere ${\mathbb{S}^3}$ , where ${\mathcal{H}}$ is the quaternion group, and a configuration of a biaxial nematic liquid crystal is described by a map from Ω to ${\mathbb{S}^3/\mathcal{H}}$ . We express the (simplest form of the) Landau–de Gennes elastic free-energy density as a density defined on maps ${q: \Omega \to \mathbb{S}^3}$ , whose functional dependence is restricted by the requirements that (1) it is well defined on the class of configuration maps from Ω to ${\mathbb{S}^3/\mathcal{H}}$ (residual symmetry) and (2) it is independent of arbitrary superposed rigid rotations (frame indifference). As an application of this representation, we then discuss some properties of the corresponding energy functional, including coercivity, lower semicontinuity and strong density of smooth maps. Other invariance properties are also considered. In the discussion, we take advantage of the identification of ${\mathbb{S}^3}$ with the Lie group of unit quaternions ${Sp(1) \cong SU(2)}$ and of the relations between quaternions and rotations in ${\mathbb{R}^3}$ and ${\mathbb{R}^4}$ .     

Potentials for tangent tensor fields on spheroids

In three-dimensional Euclidean space let S be a closed simply connected, smooth surface (spheroid). Let \(\hat n\) be the outward unit normal to S, ▽ _S the surface gradient on S, I _S the metric tensor on S, g_ij the four covariant components of I _S (i,j = 1, 2), h _ij the four covariant components of -\(\hat n\)xI _S , and D _i covariant differentiation on S. It is well known that for any tangent vector field u on S there exist scalars ? and ψ on S, unique to within additive constants, such that \(u = \nabla _s \varphi - \hat n \times \nabla _s \psi \); the covariant components of u are \(u_i = D_i \varphi + h_i^j D_j \psi \). This theorem is very useful in the study of vector fields in spherical coordinates. The present paper gives an analogous theorem for real second-order tangent tensor fields F on S: for any such F there exist scalar fields H, L, M, N such that the covariant components of F are

$$F_{ij} = H h{}_{ij} + Lg_{ij} + E_{ij} (M,N),$$     

Regularity and Singularities of Optimal Convex Shapes in the Plane

We focus here on the analysis of the regularity or singularity of solutions Ω ₀ to shape optimization problems among convex planar sets, namely:

$J(\Omega_{0})={\rm min} \{J(\Omega), \Omega \quad {\rm convex},\Omega \in \mathcal{S}_{\rm ad}\},$

where \({\mathcal{S}_{\rm ad}}\) is a set of 2-dimensional admissible shapes and \({J:\mathcal{S}_{\rm ad}\rightarrow\mathbb{R}}\) is a shape functional. Our main goal is to obtain qualitative properties of these optimal shapes by using first and second order optimality conditions, including the infinite dimensional Lagrange multiplier due to the convexity constraint. We prove two types of results:

1. i)
   under a suitable convexity property of the functional J, we prove that Ω ₀ is a W ^2,p -set, \({p\in[1, \infty]}\). This result applies, for instance, with p = ∞ when the shape functional can be written as J(Ω) = R(Ω) + P(Ω), where R(Ω) = F(|Ω|, E _f (Ω), λ₁(Ω)) involves the area |Ω|, the Dirichlet energy E _f (Ω) or the first eigenvalue of the Laplace–Dirichlet operator λ₁(Ω), and P(Ω) is the perimeter of Ω;
    

1. ii)
   under a suitable concavity assumption on the functional J, we prove that Ω ₀ is a polygon. This result applies, for instance, when the functional is now written as J(Ω) = R(Ω) ? P(Ω), with the same notations as above.
    

     

Monte Carlo Assessment of the Impact of Oscillatory and Pulsating Boundary Conditions on the Flow Through Porous Media

The linear stability analysis of vertical throughflow of power law fluid for double-diffusive convection with Soret effect in a porous channel is investigated in this study. The upper and lower boundaries are assumed to be permeable, isothermal and isosolutal. The linear stability of vertical through flow is influenced by the interactions among the non-Newtonian Rayleigh number (Ra), Buoyancy ratio (N), Lewis number (Le), Péclet number (Pe), Soret parameter (Sr) and power law index (n). The results indicate that the Soret parameter has a significant influence on convective instability of power law fluid. It has also been noticed that buoyancy ratio has a dual effect on the instability of fluid flow. Further, it is noticed that the basic temperature and concentration profiles have singularities at \(Pe = 0\) and \(Le = 1\), the convective instability is looked into for the limiting case of \(Pe\rightarrow 0\) and \(Le \rightarrow 1\). For the case of pure thermal convection with no vertical throughflow, the present numerical results coincide with the solution of standard Horton–Rogers–Lapwood problem. The present results for critical Rayleigh number obtained using bvp4c and two-term Galerkin approximation are compared with those available in the literature and are tabulated.     

Global Attractor for a Nonlinear Oscillator Coupled to the Klein–Gordon Field

The long-time asymptotics is analyzed for all finite energy solutions to a model\(\mathbf{U}(1)\)-invariant nonlinear Klein–Gordon equation in one dimension, with the nonlinearity concentrated at a single point: each finite energy solution converges as t→ ± ∞ to the set of all “nonlinear eigenfunctions” of the form ψ(x)e^{?iω t}. The global attraction is caused by the nonlinear energy transfer from lower harmonics to the continuous spectrum and subsequent dispersive radiation.We justify this mechanism by the following novel strategy based on inflation of spectrum by the nonlinearity. We show that any omega-limit trajectory has the time spectrum in the spectral gap [ ? m,m] and satisfies the original equation. This equation implies the key spectral inclusion for spectrum of the nonlinear term. Then the application of the Titchmarsh convolution theorem reduces the spectrum of each omega-limit trajectory to a single harmonic \(\omega\in[-m,m]\).The research is inspired by Bohr’s postulate on quantum transitions and Schrödinger’s identification of the quantum stationary states to the nonlinear eigenfunctions of the coupled\(\mathbf{U}(1)\)-invariant Maxwell–Schrödinger and Maxwell–Dirac equations.     

Boundedness for Some Doubly Nonlinear Parabolic Equations in Measure Spaces

In the context of measure spaces equipped with a doubling non-trivial Borel measure supporting a Poincaré inequality, we derive local and global sup bounds of the nonnegative weak subsolutions of

$$\begin{aligned} (u^{q})_t-\nabla \cdot {(|\nabla u|^{p-2}\nabla u)}=0, \quad \mathrm {in} \ U_\tau = U \times (\tau _1, \tau _2] , \quad p>1,\quad q>1 \end{aligned}$$

and of its associated Dirichlet problem, respectively. For particular ranges of the exponents p and q, we show that any locally nonnegative weak subsolution, taken in \(Q (\subset \bar{Q}\subset U_\tau )\), is controlled from above by the \(L^\alpha (\bar{Q}) \)-norm, for \(\alpha = \max \{p, q+1\}\). As for the global setting, under suitable assumptions on the boundary datum g and on the initial datum, we obtain sup bounds for u, in \(U \times \{ t\}\), which depend on the \(\sup g\) and on the \(L^{q+1}(U \times (\tau _1, \tau _1+t])\)-norm of \((u-\sup g)_+\), for all \(t \in (0, \tau _2-\tau _1]\). On the critical ranges of p and q, a priori local and global \(L^\infty \) estimates require extra qualitative information on u.