Variational Approach to Uniform Rigid Rotation of Ginzburg—Landau Vortices

Abstract

Time periodic solutions for the hyperbolic gauged Ginzburg–Landau system, with spatial domain the unit disc, are shown to exist. Time periodic solutions representing bound states of vortices rotating about one another have been previously obtained in the near self-dual limit, using perturbative techniques. In contrast, we here take a variational approach, the solutions being obtained as critical points of an indefinite functional. We consider a special class of solutions which map out, uniformly in time, an orbit of the rotation group SO(2). It is shown that in the limit of large coupling constant the solutions have nontrivial time dependence or, as is shown to be equivalent, are not radially symmetric in any gauge.