We analyze an elastic surface energy which was recently introduced by G. Napoli and L.Vergori to model thin films of nematic liquid crystals. We show how a novel approach that takes into account also the extrinsic properties of the surfaces coated by
the liquid crystal leads to considerable differences with respect to the classical intrinsic energy. Our results concern three connected aspects: i) using methods of the calculus of variations, we establish a relation between the existence of minimizers and the topology of the surface; ii) we prove, by a Ginzburg-Landau approximation, the well-posedness of the gradient flow of the energy; iii) in the case of a parametrized axisymmetric torus we obtain a stronger characterization of global and local minimizers, which we supplement with numerical experiments.
In this paper, we study Vanishing Mean Oscillation vector fields on a compact manifold with boundary. Inspired by the work of Brezis and Niremberg, we construct a topological invariant - the index - for such fields, and establish the analogue of Mors
es formula. As a consequence, we characterize the set of boundary data which can be extended to nowhere vanishing VMO vector fields. Finally, we show briefly how these ideas can be applied to (unoriented) line fields with VMO regularity, thus providing a reasonable framework for modelling a surface coated with a thin film of nematic liquid crystals.
The topology and the geometry of a surface play a fundamental role in determining the equilibrium configurations of thin films of liquid crystals. We propose here a theoretical analysis of a recently introduced surface Frank energy, in the case of tw
o-dimensional nematic liquid crystals coating a toroidal particle. Our aim is to show how a different modeling of the effect of extrinsic curvature acts as a selection principle among equilibria of the classical energy, and how new configurations emerge. In particular, our analysis predicts the existence of new stable equilibria with complex windings.
We study a new formulation for the eikonal equation |grad u| =1 on a bounded subset of R^2. Instead of a vector field grad u, we consider a field P of orthogonal projections on 1-dimensional subspaces, with div P in L^2. We prove existence and unique
ness for solutions of the equation P div P=0. We give a geometric description, comparable with the classical case, and we prove that such solutions exist only if the domain is a tubular neighbourhood of a regular closed curve. The idea of the proof is to apply a generalized method of characteristics introduced in Jabin, Otto, Perthame, Line-energy Ginzburg-Landau models: zero-energy states, Ann. Sc. Norm. Super. Pisa Cl. Sci. (5) 1 (2002), to a suitable vector field m satisfying P = m otimes m. This formulation provides a useful approach to the analysis of stripe patterns. It is specifically suited to systems where the physical properties of the pattern are invariant under rotation over 180 degrees, such as systems of block copolymers or liquid crystals.
