STRIPE PATTERNS IN A MODEL FOR BLOCK COPOLYMERS

Abstract

We consider a pattern-forming system in two space dimensions defined by an energy [Formula: see text]. The functional [Formula: see text] models strong phase separation in AB diblock copolymer melts, and patterns are represented by {0, 1}-valued functions; the values 0 and 1 correspond to the A and B phases. The parameter ε is the ratio between the intrinsic, material length-scale and the scale of the domain Ω. We show that in the limit ε → 0 any sequence uε of patterns with uniformly bounded energy [Formula: see text] becomes stripe-like: the pattern becomes locally one-dimensional and resembles a periodic stripe pattern of periodicity O(ε). In the limit the stripes become uniform in width and increasingly straight. Our results are formulated as a convergence theorem, which states that the functional [Formula: see text] Gamma-converges to a limit functional [Formula: see text]. This limit functional is defined on fields of rank-one projections, which represent the local direction of the stripe pattern. The functional [Formula: see text] is only finite if the projection field solves a version of the Eikonal equation, and in that case it is the L2-norm of the divergence of the projection field, or equivalently the L2-norm of the curvature of the field. At the level of patterns the converging objects are the jump measures |∇uε| combined with the projection fields corresponding to the tangents to the jump set. The central inequality from Peletier and Röger, Arch. Rational Mech. Anal.193 (2009) 475–537, provides the initial estimate and leads to weak measure-function pair convergence. We obtain strong convergence by exploiting the non-intersection property of the jump set.