We study minimizers of the Allen–Cahn system. We consider the $\varepsilon$-energy functional with Dirichlet values and we establish the $\Gamma$-limit. The minimizers of the limiting functional are closely related to minimizing partitions of the domain. Finally, utilizing that the triod and the straight line are the only minimal cones in the plane together with regularity results for minimal curves, we determine the precise structure of the minimizers of the limiting functional, and thus the limit of minimizers of the $\varepsilon$-energy functional as $\varepsilon \rightarrow 0$.

We analyse the $\Gamma$-convergence of general non-local convolution type functionals with varying densities depending on the space variable and on the symmetrized gradient. The limit is a local free-discontinuity functional, where the bulk term can be completely characterized in terms of an asymptotic cell formula. From that, we can deduce an homogenisation result in the stochastic setting.

We study the $\Gamma$-convergence of nonconvex vectorial integral functionals whose integrands satisfy possibly degenerate growth and coercivity conditions. The latter involve suitable scale-dependent weight functions. We prove that under appropriate uniform integrability conditions on the weight functions, which shall belong to a Muckenhoupt class, the corresponding functionals $\Gamma$-converge, up to subsequences, to a degenerate integral functional defined on a limit weighted Sobolev space. The general analysis is then applied to the case of random stationary integrands and weights to prove a stochastic homogenization result for the corresponding functionals.

In this work we derive by $\Gamma$-convergence techniques a model for brittle fracture linearly elastic plates. Precisely, we start from a brittle linearly elastic thin film with positive thickness $\rho$ and study the limit as $\rho$ tends to $0$. The analysis is performed with no a priori restrictions on the admissible displacements and on the geometry of the fracture set. The limit model is characterized by a Kirchhoff-Love type of structure.

Starting from three-dimensional non-linear elasticity under the restriction of incompressibility, we derive reduced models to capture the behaviour of strings in response to external forces. Our Γ-convergence analysis of the constrained energy functionals in the limit of shrinking cross-sections gives rise to explicit one-dimensional limit energies. The latter depend on the scaling of the applied forces. The effect of local volume preservation is reflected either in their energy densities through a constrained minimization over the cross-section variables or in the class of admissible deformations. Interestingly, all scaling regimes allow for compression and/or stretching of the string. The main difficulty in the proof of the Γ-limit is to establish recovery sequences that accommodate the non-linear differential constraint imposed by the incompressibility. To this end, we modify classical constructions in the unconstrained case with the help of an inner perturbation argument tailored for 3d-1d dimension reduction problems.

We show that the spectrum of the relativistic mean curvature operator on a bounded domain Ω ⊂ ℝN (N ⩾ 1) having smooth boundary, subject to the homogeneous Dirichlet boundary condition, is exactly the interval (λ1(2), ∞), where λ1(2) stands for the principal frequency of the Laplace operator in Ω.

We look for best partitions of the unit interval that minimize certain functionals defined in terms of the eigenvalues of Sturm–Liouville problems. Via Γ-convergence theory, we study the asymptotic distribution of the minimizers as the number of intervals of the partition tends to infinity. Then we discuss several examples that fit in our framework, such as the sum of (positive and negative) powers of the eigenvalues and an approximation of the trace of the heat Sturm–Liouville operator.

This paper focuses on the role of a government of a large population of interacting agents as a meanfield optimal control problem derived from deterministic finite agent dynamics. The control problems are constrained by a Partial Differential Equation of continuity-type without diffusion, governing the dynamics of the probability distribution of the agent population. We derive existence of optimal controls in a measure-theoretical setting as natural limits of finite agent optimal controls without any assumption on the regularity of control competitors. In particular, we prove the consistency of mean-field optimal controls with corresponding underlying finite agent ones. The results follow from a Γ -convergence argument constructed over the mean-field limit, which stems from leveraging the superposition principle.

The Ginzburg–Landau functional is a phase transition model which is suitable for classification type problems. We study the asymptotics of a sequence of Ginzburg–Landau functionals with anisotropic interaction potentials on point clouds Ψn where n denotes the number data points. In particular, we show the limiting problem, in the sense of Γ-convergence, is related to the total variation norm restricted to functions taking binary values, which can be understood as a surface energy. We generalize the result known for isotropic interaction potentials to the anisotropic case and add a result concerning the rate of convergence.

Minimizing movements are investigated for an energy which is the superposition of a convex functional and fast small oscillations. Thus a minimizing movement scheme involves a temporal parameter τ and a spatial parameter ε, with τ describing the time step and the frequency of the oscillations being proportional to 1/ε. The extreme cases of fast time scales τ ≪ ε and slow time scales ε ≪ τ have been investigated in [4]. In this paper, the intermediate (critical) case of finite ratio ε/τ > 0 is studied. It is shown that a pinning threshold exists, with initial data below the threshold being a fixed point of the dynamics. A characterization of the pinning threshold is given. For initial data above the pinning threshold, the equation and velocity describing the homogenized motion are determined.

Let Ω⊂ℝN (N≥2) be a bounded domain with smooth boundary and {pn} be a sequence of real numbers converging to+∞ as n→∞. For each integer n>1, we define the function $\varphi_{n}(t)=p_{n} \vert t \vert^{p_{n}-2}te^{ \vert t \vert^{p_{n}}}$, for all t∈ℝ, and we prove the existence of a unique nonnegative variational solution for the problem−div(((φn(|∇ u(x)|))/(|∇ u(x)|))∇ u(x))=φn(1), when x∈Ω, subject to the homogeneous Dirichlet boundary condition. Next, we establish the uniform convergence in Ω of the sequence of solutions for the above family of equations to the distance function to the boundary of Ω. Our result complements the earlier developments on the topic obtained by Payne and Philippin [26], Kawohl [21], Bhattacharya, DiBenedetto and Manfredi [2], Perez-Llanos and Rossi [27] and Bocea and Mihăilescu [4].

The consistency of a non-local anisotropic Ginzburg–Landau type functional for data classification and clustering is studied. The Ginzburg–Landau objective functional combines a double well potential, that favours indicator valued functions, and the p-Laplacian, that enforces regularity. Under appropriate scaling between the two terms, minimisers exhibit a phase transition on the order of ɛ = ɛn, where n is the number of data points. We study the large data asymptotics, i.e. as n → ∝, in the regime where ɛn → 0. The mathematical tool used to address this question is Γ-convergence. It is proved that the discrete model converges to a weighted anisotropic perimeter.

The asymptotic behaviour of inhomogeneous power-law type functionals is undertaken via De Giorgi’s Γ-convergence. Our results generalize recent work dealing with the asymptotic behaviour of power-law functionals acting on fields belonging to variable exponent Lebesgue and Sobolev spaces to the Orlicz–Sobolev setting.

We wish to understand the macroscopic plastic behaviour of metals by upscaling the micro-mechanics of dislocations. We consider a highly simplified dislocation network, which allows our discrete model to be a one dimensional particle system, in which the interactions between the particles (dislocation walls) are singular and non-local. As a first step towards treating realistic geometries, we focus on finite-size effects rather than considering an infinite domain as typically discussed in the literature. We derive effective equations for the dislocation density by means of Γ-convergence on the space of probability measures. Our analysis yields a classification of macroscopic models, in which the size of the domain plays a key role.

The subject of this paper is the rigorous derivation of reduced models for a thin plate by means of Γ-convergence, in the framework of finite plasticity. Denoting by ε the thickness of the plate, we analyse the case where the scaling factor of the elasto-plastic energy per unit volume is of order ε2α−2, with α ≥ 3. According to the value of α, partially or fully linearized models are deduced, which correspond, in the absence of plastic deformation, to the Von Kármán plate theory and the linearized plate theory.

In this paper we consider a new kind of Mumford–Shah functionalE(u, Ω) for mapsu : ℝm → ℝnwith m ≥ n. The most important novelty is that theenergy features a singular set Su ofcodimension greater than one, defined through the theory of distributional jacobians.After recalling the basic definitions and some well established results, we prove anapproximation property for the energy E(u, Ω) viaΓ −convergence, in the same spirit of the work by Ambrosio andTortorelli [L. Ambrosio and V.M. Tortorelli, Commun. Pure Appl. Math.43 (1990) 999–1036].

We establish some new results about the Γ-limit, with respect to the L1-topology, of two different (but related) phase-field approximations \hbox{$\{\mathcal E_\eps\}_\eps,\,\{\widetilde{\mathcalE}_\eps\}_\eps$}$\mathrm{\{}{\mathrm{ℰ}}_{\mathit{\epsilon }}{\mathrm{\}}}_{\mathit{\epsilon }}\mathit{,}\hspace{0.17em}\mathrm{\{}\begin{array}{}{}_{\mathrm{􏽥}}\\ {\mathrm{ℰ}}_{\mathit{\epsilon }}\end{array}{\mathrm{\}}}_{\mathit{\epsilon }}$ of the so-called Euler’s Elastica Bending Energy for curves in the plane. In particular we characterize the Γ-limit as ε → 0 of ℰε, and show that in general the Γ-limits of ℰε and \hbox{$\widetilde{\mathcal E}_\eps$}$\begin{array}{}{\mathrm{􏽥}}_{}\\ {\mathrm{ℰ}}_{\mathit{\epsilon }}\end{array}$ do not coincide on indicator functions of sets with non-smooth boundary. More precisely we show that the domain of the Γ-limit of \hbox{$\widetilde{\mathcal E}_\eps$}$\begin{array}{}{\mathrm{􏽥}}_{}\\ {\mathrm{ℰ}}_{\mathit{\epsilon }}\end{array}$ strictly contains the domain of the Γ-limit of ℰε.

We compute the Γ-limit of a sequence of non-local integral functionalsdepending on a regularization of the gradient term by means of a convolution kernel. Inparticular, as Γ-limit, we obtain free discontinuity functionals withlinear growth and with anisotropic surface energy density.

The paper deals with a Dirichlet spectral problem for an elliptic operator with ε-periodic coefficients in a 3D bounded domain of small thickness δ. We study the asymptotic behavior of the spectrum as ε and δ tend to zero. This asymptotic behavior depends crucially on whether ε and δ are of the same order (δ ≈ ε), or ε is much less than δ(δ = ετ, τ < 1), or ε is much greater than δ(δ = ετ, τ > 1). We consider all three cases.

Shape optimization of mechanical devices is investigated in the context of large, geometrically strongly nonlinear deformations and nonlinear hyperelastic constitutive laws. A weighted sum of the structure compliance, its weight, and its surface area are minimized. The resulting nonlinear elastic optimization problem differs significantly from classical shape optimization in linearized elasticity. Indeed, there exist different definitions for the compliance: the change in potential energy of the surface load, the stored elastic deformation energy, and the dissipation associated with the deformation. Furthermore, elastically optimal deformations are no longer unique so that one has to choose the minimizing elastic deformation for which the cost functional should be minimized, and this complicates the mathematical analysis. Additionally, along with the non-uniqueness, buckling instabilities can appear, and the compliance functional may jump as the global equilibrium deformation switches between different bluckling modes. This is associated with a possible non-existence of optimal shapes in a worst-case scenario. In this paper the sharp-interface description of shapes is relaxed via an Allen-Cahn or Modica-Mortola type phase-field model, and soft material instead of void is considered outside the actual elastic object. An existence result for optimal shapes in the phase field as well as in the sharp-interface model is established, and the model behavior for decreasing phase-field interface width is investigated in terms of Γ-convergence. Computational results are based on a nested optimization with a trust-region method as the inner minimization for the equilibrium deformation and a quasi-Newton method as the outer minimization of the actual objective functional. Furthermore, a multi-scale relaxation approach with respect to the spatial resolution and the phase-field parameter is applied. Various computational studies underline the theoretical observations.