An interesting problem in statistical physics is the condensation of classical particles in droplets or clusters when the pair-interaction is given by a stable LennardJones-type potential. We study two aspects of this problem. We start by deriving a large deviations principle for the cluster size distribution for any inverse temperature β ∈ (0,∞) and particle density ρ ∈ (0, ρcp) in the thermod...

We consider a homogenization problem for the magnetic GinzburgLandau functional in domains with a large number of small holes. We establish a scaling relation between sizes of holes and the magnitude of the external magnetic field when the multiple vortices pinned by holes appear in nested subdomains and their homogenized density is described by a hierarchy of variational problems. This stands ...

In this work we deal with the stochastic homogenization of the initial boundary value problems of monotone type. The models of monotone type under consideration describe the deformation behaviour of inelastic materials with a microstructure which can be characterised by random measures. Based on the Fitzpatrick function concept we reduce the study of the asymptotic behaviour of monotone operato...

The formation of microdomains, also called rafts, in biomembranes can be attributed to the surface tension of the membrane. In order to model this phenomenon, a model involving a coupling between the local composition and the local curvature was proposed by Seul and Andelman in 1995. In addition to the familiar Cahn-Hilliard/Modica-Mortola energy, there are additional ‘forces’ that prevent larg...

Since the motion of dislocations is regarded as the main cause of plastic deformation, a large literature is focused on the problem of deriving plasticity models from more fundamental dislocation models. The starting point of our derivation is a semi-discrete dislocation model. The main novelty of our approach is that we consider a nonlinear dislocation energy, whereas most mathematical and eng...

A justification of heterogeneous membrane models as zero-thickness limits of a cylindral three-dimensional heterogeneous nonlinear hyperelastic body is proposed in the spirit of Le Dret (1995). Specific characterizations of the 2D elastic energy are produced. As a generalization of Bouchitté et al. (2002), the case where external loads induce a density of bending moment that produces a Cosserat...

We carry out the spatially periodic homogenization of nonlinear bending theory for plates. The derivation is rigorous in the sense of Γ-convergence. In contrast to what one naturally would expect, our result shows that the limiting functional is not simply a quadratic functional of the second fundamental form of the deformed plate as it is the case in nonlinear plate theory. It turns out that t...

We develop a global-in-time variational approach to the time-discretization of rate-independent processes. In particular, we investigate a discrete version of the variational principle based on the weighted energy-dissipation functional introduced in [MO08]. We prove the conditional convergence of time-discrete approximate minimizers to energetic solutions of the time-continuous problem. Moreov...

We study integral functionals constrained to divergence-free vector fields in Lp on a thin domain, under standard p-growth and coercivity assumptions, 1 < p < ∞. We prove that as the thickness of the domain goes to zero, the Gamma-limit with respect to weak convergence in Lp is always given by the associated functional with convexified energy density wherever it is finite. Remarkably, this happ...

We study the de Gennes free energy for smectic A liquid crystals over S2-valued vector fields to understand the chevron (zigzag) pattern formed in the presence of an applied magnetic field. We identify a small dimensionless parameter ε, and investigate the behaviors of the minimizers when the field strength is of order O(ε−1). In this regime, we show via Γ-convergence that a chevron structure w...