Curve-Supported Concentrations of Vortices and Screw Dislocations Subject to Confinement

Abstract

We study the concentration of logarithmically interacting defects, such as Ginzburg--Landau vortices and screw dislocations, on closed curves in two dimensions, subject to a confining field. We prove that a measure supported on a smooth closed curve solves the mean-field transport equation exactly when, in Lagrangian labels, the curve moves with the negative induced velocity and each label keeps its mass. This contour law is a gradient flow of the mean-field energy. We prove that the gradient of the energy on a curve has a leading term proportional to the operator $|D|$ with Fourier symbol $|k|$, which prevents every smooth equilibrium curve from being a local minimizer, in a gradient-flow analogue of the Kelvin--Helmholtz instability of vortex sheets. In a radially symmetric case with quadratic confinement, we find an explicit circular equilibrium whose linearization is diagonal in Fourier modes, and we show that, as $N\rightarrow \infty $, the linear spectrum of the regular $N$-gon converges, mode by mode, to that of the circle. Finally, we compute a critical point on two concentric circles with lower energy than the single circle, indicating a rich family of multi-circle equilibria.