CMX Lunch Seminar

" I will describe some recent results related to some simplified models of Liquid Crystals, with a view towards geometric free boundaries. A simplified version of the Ericksen-Leslie system has been introduced by FH Lin in the 80's. After describing the state of the art for this system, I will introduce a new one involving a free boundary. Though the mathematical analysis of the system is still very preliminary, some results are still available in 2 dimensions and I will mainly motivate the introduction of geometric variational problems with free boundaries and how one can deal with them, thanks to recent advances in compensated-compactness in odd dimension. I will mention several open questions and possible further generalizations. "