Symmetry of uniaxial global Landau-de Gennes minimizers in the theory of nematic liquid crystals
We extend the recent radial symmetry results by Pisante [23] and Millot & Pisante [19] (who show that all entire solutions of the vector-valued Ginzburg-Landau equations in superconductivity theory, in the three-dimensional space, are comprised of the well-known class of equivariant solution...
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| Format: | Journal article |
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2011
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| Summary: | We extend the recent radial symmetry results by Pisante [23] and Millot & Pisante [19] (who show that all entire solutions of the vector-valued Ginzburg-Landau equations in superconductivity theory, in the three-dimensional space, are comprised of the well-known class of equivariant solutions) to the Landau-de Gennes framework in the theory of nematic liquid crystals. In the low temperature limit, we obtain a characterization of global Landau-de Gennes minimizers, in the restricted class of uniaxial tensors, in terms of the well-known radial-hedgehog solution. We use this characterization to prove that global Landau-de Gennes minimizers cannot be purely uniaxial for sufficiently low temperatures. |
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