Isotropic realizability of electric fields around critical points

TL;DR

This paper investigates conditions under which a gradient field with critical points can be realized as an electric field with isotropic conductivity, analyzing different types of critical points and their local and periodic realizability.

Contribution

It provides a new characterization of local isotropic realizability near saddle points and discusses the impact of non-hyperbolic critical points and periodic fields.

Findings

Saddle points allow local realizability via bounded Laplacian conditions.

Sink or source points satisfy a strong maximum principle under boundedness.

Non-hyperbolic critical points generally prevent local realizability.

Abstract

In this paper we study the isotropic realizability of a given regular gradient field $\nabla u$ as an electric field, namely when $\nabla u$ is solution of the equation $\div\left(\si\nabla u\right)=0$ for some isotropic conductivity $\si>0$. The case of a function $u$ without critical point was investigated in \cite{BMT} thanks to a gradient flow approach. The presence of a critical point needs a specific treatment according to the behavior of the dynamical system around the point. The case of a saddle point is the most favorable and leads us to a characterization of the local isotropic realizability through some boundedness condition involving the laplacian of $u$ along the gradient flow. The case of a sink or a source implies a strong maximum principle under the same boundedness condition. However, when the critical point is not hyperbolic the isotropic realizability is not generally satisfied even piecewisely in the neighborhood of the point. The isotropic realizability in the torus for periodic gradient fields is also discussed in particular when the trajectories of the gradient system are bounded.