Surface Tension and $\Gamma$-Convergence of Van der Waals-Cahn-Hilliard Phase Transitions in Stationary Ergodic Media

TL;DR

This paper investigates the large-scale behavior of phase transitions in random media, showing that the complex energy functional converges to a deterministic anisotropic perimeter characterized by a Finsler norm.

Contribution

It establishes the homogenization of Van der Waals-Cahn-Hilliard energies in stationary ergodic media to a deterministic anisotropic perimeter, extending previous work to Finsler metrics.

Findings

Large-scale energy approximates a deterministic Finsler perimeter.

Construction of a sub-additive quantity for homogenization.

Extension of homogenization results to ergodic media with Finsler metrics.

Abstract

We study the large scale equilibrium behavior of Van der Waals-Cahn-Hilliard phase transitions in stationary ergodic media. Specifically, we are interested in free energy functionals of the following form \begin{equation*} \mathcal{F}^{\omega}(u) = \int_{\mathbb{R}^{d}} \left(\frac{1}{2} \varphi^{\omega}(x,Du(x))^{2} + W(u(x)) \right) \, dx, \end{equation*} where $W$ is a double-well potential and $\varphi^{\omega}(x,\cdot)$ is a stationary ergodic Finsler metric. We show that, at large scales, the random energy $\mathcal{F}^{\omega}$ can be approximated by the anisotropic perimeter associated with a deterministic Finsler norm $\tilde{\varphi}$. To find $\tilde{\varphi}$, we build on existing work of Alberti, Bellettini, and Presutti, showing, in particular, that there is a natural sub-additive quantity in this context.