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Matteo Novaga

Publications and source records attributed to Matteo Novaga.

At least 109 records · Page 6Linked to original sources
arXiv2016

On well-posedness of variational models of charged drops

Electrified liquids are well known to be prone to a variety of interfacial instabilities that result in the onset of apparent interfacial singularities and liquid fragmentation. In the case of electrically conducting liquids, one of the basic models describing the equilibrium interfacial configurations and the onset of instability assumes the liquid to be equipotential and interprets those configurations as local minimizers of the energy consisting of the sum of the surface energy and the electrostatic energy. Here we show that, surprisingly, this classical geometric variational model is mathematically ill-posed irrespectively of the degree to which the liquid is electrified. Specifically, we demonstrate that an isolated spherical droplet is never a local minimizer, no matter how small is the total charge on the droplet, since the energy can always be lowered by a smooth, arbitrarily small distortion of the droplet's surface. This is in sharp contrast with the experimental observations that a critical amount of charge is needed in order to destabilize a spherical droplet. We discuss several possible regularization mechanisms for the considered free boundary problem and argue that well-posedness can be restored by the inclusion of the entropic effects resulting in finite screening of free charges.

math.AP↗
arXiv2015

Spines of minimal length

In this paper we raise the question whether every closed Riemannian manifold has a spine of minimal area, and we answer it affirmatively in the surface case. On constant curvature surfaces we introduce the spine systole, a continuous real function on moduli space that measures the minimal length of a spine in each surface. We show that the spine systole is a proper function and has its global minima precisely on the extremal surfaces (those containing the biggest possible discs). We also study minimal spines, which are critical points for the length functional. We completely classify minimal spines on flat tori, proving that the number of them is a proper function on moduli space. We also show that the number of minimal spines of uniformly bounded length is finite on hyperbolic surfaces.

math.GT↗
arXiv2015

Weighted TV minimization and applications to vortex density models

Motivated in part by models arising from mathematical descriptions of Bose-Einstein condensation, we consider total variation minimization problems in which the total variation is weighted by a function that may degenerate near the domain boundary, and the fidelity term contains a weight that may be both degenerate and singular. We develop a general theory for a class of such problems, with special attention to the examples arising from physical models.

math-ph↗
arXiv2015

Existence, regularity and structure of confined elasticae

We consider the problem of minimizing the bending or elastic energy among Jordan curves confined in a given open set $Ω$. We prove existence, regularity and some structural properties of minimizers. In particular, when $Ω$ is convex we show that a minimizer is necessarily a convex curve. We also provide an example of a minimizer with self-intersections.

math.OC↗
arXiv2015

Ground states of a two phase model with cross and self attractive interactions

We consider a variational model for two interacting species (or phases), subject to cross and self attractive forces. We show existence and several qualitative properties of minimizers. Depending on the strengths of the forces, different behaviors are possible: phase mixing or phase separation with nested or disjoint phases. In the case of Coulomb interaction forces, we characterize the ground state configurations.

math.AP↗
arXiv2015

A note on non lower semicontinuous perimeter functionals on partitions

We consider isotropic non lower semicontinuous weighted perimeter functionals defined on partitions of domains in $\mathbb{R}^n$. Besides identifying a condition on the structure of the domain which ensures the existence of minimizing configurations, we describe the structure of such minima, as well as their regularity.

math.AP↗
arXiv2015

Low density phases in a uniformly charged liquid

This paper is concerned with the macroscopic behavior of global energy minimizers in the three-dimensional sharp interface unscreened Ohta-Kawasaki model of diblock copolymer melts. This model is also referred to as the nuclear liquid drop model in the studies of the structure of highly compressed nuclear matter found in the crust of neutron stars, and, more broadly, is a paradigm for energy-driven pattern forming systems in which spatial order arises as a result of the competition of short-range attractive and long-range repulsive forces. Here we investigate the large volume behavior of minimizers in the low volume fraction regime, in which one expects the formation of a periodic lattice of small droplets of the minority phase in a sea of the majority phase. Under periodic boundary conditions, we prove that the considered energy $Γ$-converges to an energy functional of the limit "homogenized" measure associated with the minority phase consisting of a local linear term and a non-local quadratic term mediated by the Coulomb kernel. As a consequence, asymptotically the mass of the minority phase in a minimizer spreads uniformly across the domain. Similarly, the energy spreads uniformly across the domain as well, with the limit energy density minimizing the energy of a single droplets per unit volume. Finally, we prove that in the macroscopic limit the connected components of the minimizers have volumes and diameters that are bounded above and below by universal constants, and that most of them converge to the minimizers of the energy divided by volume for the whole space problem.

math-ph↗
arXiv2015

Rigidity and sharp stability estimates for hypersurfaces with constant and almost-constant nonlocal mean curvature

We prove that the boundary of a (not necessarily connected) bounded smooth set with constant nonlocal mean curvature is a sphere. More generally, and in contrast with what happens in the classical case, we show that the Lipschitz constant of the nonlocal mean curvature of such a boundary controls its $C^2$-distance from a single sphere. The corresponding stability inequality is obtained with a sharp decay rate.

math.AP↗
arXiv2014

Existence and stability for a non-local isoperimetric model of charged liquid drops

We consider a variational problem related to the shape of charged liquid drops at equilibrium. We show that this problem never admits global minimizers with respect to $L^1$ perturbations preserving the volume. This leads us to study it in more regular classes of competitors, for which we show existence of minimizers. We then prove that the ball is the unique solution for sufficiently small charges.

math.AP↗
arXiv2014

Motion by curvature of planar networks II

We prove that the curvature flow of an embedded planar network of three curves connected through a triple junction, with fixed endpoints on the boundary of a given strictly convex domain, exists smooth until the lengths of the three curves stay far from zero. If this is the case for all times, then the evolution exists for all times and the network converges to the Steiner minimal connection between the three endpoints.

math.AP↗
arXiv2013

Fine properties of the subdifferential for a class of one-homogeneous functionals

We collect here some known results on the subdifferential of one-homogeneous functionals, which are anisotropic and nonhomogeneous variants of the total variation and establish a new relationship between Lebesgue points of the calibrating field and regular points of the level lines of the corresponding calibrated function.

math.AP↗