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In this paper, we study a model for the magnetization in thin ferromagnetic films. It comes as a variational problem for $S^1$-valued maps $m^{\text{'}}$ (the magnetization) of two variables $x^{\text{'}}$: $E_{\epsilon }\left(m^{\text{'}}\right)=\epsilon \int {|{\nabla }^{\text{'}}·m^{\text{'}}|}^{2}d{x}^{\text{'}}+\frac{1}{2}\int {\left||{\nabla }^{\text{'}}{|}^{-1/2}{\nabla }^{\text{'}}·m^{\text{'}}\right|}^{2}d{x}^{\text{'}}$. We are interested in the behavior of minimizers as $\epsilon \to 0$. They are expected to be $S^1$-valued maps $m^{\text{'}}$ of vanishing distributional divergence ${\nabla }^{\text{'}}·m^{\text{'}}=0$, so that appropriate boundary conditions enforce line discontinuities. For finite $\epsilon >0$, these line discontinuities are approximated by smooth transition layers, the so-called Néel walls. Néel...

We consider a random, uniformly elliptic coefficient field $a$ on the lattice ${\mathbb{Z}}^d$. The distribution $\langle ·\rangle$ of the coefficient field is assumed to be stationary. Delmotte and Deuschel showed that the gradient and second mixed derivative of the parabolic Green’s function $G(t,x,y)$ satisfy optimal annealed estimates which are $L^2$ and $L^1$, respectively, in probability, i.e., they obtained bounds on $\langle |{\nabla }_{x}G(t,x,y){{|}^2\rangle }^{1/2}$ and $\langle \left|{\nabla }_x{\nabla }_{y}G(t,x,y)\right|\rangle$. In particular, the elliptic Green’s function $G(x,y)$ satisfies optimal annealed bounds. In their recent work, the authors...

We establish an optimal, linear rate of convergence for the stochastic homogenization of discrete linear elliptic equations. We consider the model problem of independent and identically distributed coefficients on a discretized unit torus. We show that the difference between the solution to the random problem on the discretized torus and the first two terms of the two-scale asymptotic expansion has the same scaling as in the periodic case. In particular the -norm in probability of...

We study the Landau-Lifshitz model for the energy of multi-scale transition layers – called “domain walls” – in soft ferromagnetic films. Domain walls separate domains of constant magnetization vectors $m_{\alpha }^{\pm }\in {𝕊}^2$ that differ by an angle $2\alpha$. Assuming translation invariance tangential to the wall, our main result is the rigorous derivation of a reduced model for the energy of the optimal transition layer, which in a certain parameter regime confirms the experimental, numerical and physical predictions: The...

We consider the coarse-graining of a lattice system with continuous spin variable. In the first part, two abstract results are established: sufficient conditions for a logarithmic Sobolev inequality with constants independent of the dimension (Theorem 3) and sufficient conditions for convergence to the hydrodynamic limit (Theorem 8). In the second part, we use the abstract results to treat a specific example, namely the Kawasaki dynamics with Ginzburg–Landau-type potential.

We consider a class of two-dimensional Ginzburg-Landau problems which are characterized by energy density concentrations on a one-dimensional set. In this paper, we investigate the states of vanishing energy. We classify these zero-energy states in the whole space: They are either constant or a vortex. A bounded domain can sustain a zero-energy state only if the domain is a disk and the state a vortex. Our proof is based on specific entropies which lead to a kinetic formulation, and on a careful...