Lamellar phase solutions for diblock copolymers with nonlocal diffusions

TL;DR

This paper studies lamellar phase solutions in diblock copolymers with nonlocal diffusion, identifying the gamma-limit and explicit local minimizers, revealing new conditions for stability in the nonlocal setting.

Contribution

It introduces a novel analysis of nonlocal diffusions in diblock copolymers, deriving gamma-convergence and explicit lamellar minimizers with new stability conditions.

Findings

Gamma-limit identified as epsilon approaches zero

Explicit local minimizers for lamellar phases found

New stability condition involving chain length and nonlocal interaction strength

Abstract

For a diblock copolymer with total chain length $\gamma>0$ and mass ratio $m\in(-1,1)$, we consider the problem of minimizing the doubly nonlocal free energy $$ \mathcal{E}_{\varepsilon}(u) =\mathcal{H}(u) +\frac{1}{\varepsilon^{2s}} \int_{\Omega}W(u)\,dx +\frac{1}{2}\int_{\Omega} \left|(-\gamma^{2}\Delta)^{-\frac{1}{2}}(u-m)\right|^2\,dx $$ in a domain $\Omega$, where $\mathcal{H}(u)$ is a fractional $H^s$-norm with $s\in(0,\frac12)$, and $W$ is a double-well potential. This arises in the study of micro-phase separation phenomena for diblock copolymers with nonlocal diffusions. On the unit interval, we identify the $\Gamma$-limit as $\varepsilon\to0^+$, and also find explicit isolated local minimizers associated the lamellar morphology phase in the case $m=0$, provided that the chain is sufficiently short or the nonlocal interaction is sufficiently strong (i.e. as $s\to0^+$). We stress that such extra condition is new for the nonlocal case and is not present in the classical model. The proof, while elementary, requires a careful analysis of the nonlocal integrals.