Project 1: Cauchy-Born rule at positive temperature

Participants

Stefan Adams, Jean-Dominique Deuschel, Roman Kotecký, Stephan Luckhaus, Stefan Müller, Max von Renesse

Summary

We consider gradient Gibbs fields in the context of both effective interface models  and lattice spring models of nonlinearly elastic crystals. In case of strictly convex interaction potential, Funaki and Spohn have characterised the ergodic extremal gradient Gibbs states. Also the microcanonical Gibbs distribution for fixed volume can be derived via large deviation principle in this case.

In the context of lattice spring models a realistic interaction has to be nonconvex in view of frame indifference. Friesecke and Theil have shown for a model problem that despite the lack of convexity the Cauchy-Born rule holds in a certain parameter regime, i.e., the ground state for affine boundary conditions is given by an affine deformation. Their argument uses central ideas from the (continuum) calculus of variations, in particular the existence on interesting null Lagrangians. Our objective is to relax the convexity asumption of the interaction potential and characterise the ergodic Gibbs states for both the interface model (which corresponds to a scalar independent variable) and lattice spring model (which corresponds to a vector-valued independent variable).

Achievements of the research group:

  • C. Cotar, J.-D. Deuschel and S. Müller:
  • Strict convexity of the free energy for non-convex gradient models at moderate $\beta$
    Comm. Math. Phys., to appear
    preprint

  • C.Cotar and J.-D. Deuschel:
  • Decay of covariances, uniqueness of ergodic component and scaling limit for a class of $\nabla\phi$ systems with non-convex potential
    preprint

  • F. Caravenna and J.-D. Deuschel:
  • Scaling limits of (1+1)-dimensional pinning models with Laplacian interaction
    preprint

  • F. Caravenna and J.-D. Deuschel:
  • Pinning and wetting transition for (1+1)-dimensional fields with Laplacian interaction
    Ann. Probab., to appear.
    preprint