Applied Mathematics Colloquia by Keith Promislow: Sharp Interface Limits in Molecular Width Membranes

Speaker:

Keith Promislow, professor of mathematics, Michigan State University

Title:

Sharp Interface Limits in Molecular Width Membranes

Abstract:

There has been great success in studying energies and gradient flows of material science problems in which material properties are preserved as interfacial width is taken to zero. Chief among these is Gamma-convergence and its extensions to gradient flows. We review some of these results, and present experiments and a minimal model of interfaces in which molecular size has a significant role. Indeed for these phenomena a naïve limit leads to ill-posed limit that must be regularized to obtain meaningful limiting behavior.

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Applied Mathematics Colloquium