Construction of a Pathway Map on a Complicated Energy Landscape

Abstract

How do we search for the entire family tree of possible intermediate states, without unwanted random guesses, starting from a stationary state on the energy landscape all the way down to energy minima? Here we introduce a general numerical method that constructs the pathway map, which guides our understanding of how a physical system moves on the energy landscape. The method identifies the transition state between energy minima and the energy barrier associated with such a state. As an example, we solve the Landau-de Gennes energy incorporating the Dirichlet boundary conditions to model a liquid crystal confined in a square box; we illustrate the basic concepts by examining the multiple stationary solutions and the connected pathway maps of the model.