Special Session 195: Calculus of Variations and Hyperbolic PDEs in Solid Mechanics

Low Regularity Potentials in Heterogeneous Cahn--Hilliard Functionals
Jakob Deutsch
TU Wien
Austria
Co-Author(s):    Riccardo Cristoferi, Luca Pignatelli
Abstract:
We investigate the Cahn--Hilliard functional, a prototypical model for liquid--liquid phase separation, in a highly irregular setting. In particular, we consider potentials of low regularity that vanish on space-dependent wells. Under very mild assumptions, we prove a robust compactness result. By slightly strengthening the regularity of the wells and the growth conditions of the potential near them, we then fully characterize the asymptotic behavior of the associated family of functionals via a $\Gamma$-convergence analysis.