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GCOE lecture series
Seminar information archive ～04/18｜Next seminar｜Future seminars 04/19～
2012/11/29
10:00-12:10 Room #123 (Graduate School of Math. Sci. Bldg.)
Haim Brezis (Rutgers University / Technion)
Sobolev maps with values into the circle (ENGLISH)
Haim Brezis (Rutgers University / Technion)
Sobolev maps with values into the circle (ENGLISH)
[ Abstract ]
Sobolev functions with values into R are very well understood and play an immense role in many branches of Mathematics. By contrast, the theory of Sobolev maps with values into the unit circle is still under construction. Such maps occur e.g. in the asymptotic analysis of the Ginzburg-Landau model. The reason one is interested in Sobolev maps, rather than smooth maps is to allow singularities such as x/|x| in 2D or line singularities 3D which appear in physical problems. Our focus in these lectures is not the Ginzburg-Landau equation per se, but rather the intrinsic study of the function space W^{1,p} of maps from a smooth domain in R^N taking their values into the unit circle. Such classes of maps have an amazingly rich structure. Geometrical and Topological effects are already noticeable in this simple framework, since S^1 has nontrivial topology. Moreover the fact that the target space is the circle (as opposed to higher-dimensional manifolds) offers the option to introduce a lifting. We'll see that "optimal liftings" are in one-to-one correspondence with minimal connections (resp. minimal surfaces) spanned by the topological singularities of u.
I will also discuss the question of uniqueness of lifting . A key ingredient in some of the proofs is a formula (due to myself, Bourgain and Mironescu) which provides an original way of approximating Sobolev norms (or the total variation) by nonlocal functionals. Nonconvex versions of these functionals raise very challenging questions recently tackled together with H.-M. Nguyen. Comparable functionals also occur in Image Processing and suggest exciting interactions with this field.
Sobolev functions with values into R are very well understood and play an immense role in many branches of Mathematics. By contrast, the theory of Sobolev maps with values into the unit circle is still under construction. Such maps occur e.g. in the asymptotic analysis of the Ginzburg-Landau model. The reason one is interested in Sobolev maps, rather than smooth maps is to allow singularities such as x/|x| in 2D or line singularities 3D which appear in physical problems. Our focus in these lectures is not the Ginzburg-Landau equation per se, but rather the intrinsic study of the function space W^{1,p} of maps from a smooth domain in R^N taking their values into the unit circle. Such classes of maps have an amazingly rich structure. Geometrical and Topological effects are already noticeable in this simple framework, since S^1 has nontrivial topology. Moreover the fact that the target space is the circle (as opposed to higher-dimensional manifolds) offers the option to introduce a lifting. We'll see that "optimal liftings" are in one-to-one correspondence with minimal connections (resp. minimal surfaces) spanned by the topological singularities of u.
I will also discuss the question of uniqueness of lifting . A key ingredient in some of the proofs is a formula (due to myself, Bourgain and Mironescu) which provides an original way of approximating Sobolev norms (or the total variation) by nonlocal functionals. Nonconvex versions of these functionals raise very challenging questions recently tackled together with H.-M. Nguyen. Comparable functionals also occur in Image Processing and suggest exciting interactions with this field.
