Regularity of Minimizers for a General Class of Constrained Energies in Two-Dimensional Domains with Applications to Liquid Crystals

Abstract

We investigate minimizers defined on a bounded domain $\hat{I}\text{c◯}$ in ${\mathbb{R}}^2$ for singular constrained energy functionals that include Ball and Majumdar's modification of the Landau-de Gennes Q-tensor model for nematic liquid crystals. We prove regularity of minimizers with finite energy and show that their range on compact subdomains of $\hat{I}\text{c◯}$ does not intersect the boundary of the constraining set.

22 pages with 1 figure