Minimizers with topological singularities in two dimensional elasticity

¹ Department of Mathematics, University of Surrey, Guildford, GU2 7XH, UK; j.bevan@surrey.ac.uk
² Department of Mathematics, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA; xiayan@math.msu.edu

Received: 28 October 2005
Revised: 31 March 2006

Abstract

For a class of 2-D elastic energies we show that a radial equilibrium solution is the unique global minimizer in a subclass of all admissible maps. The boundary constraint is a double cover of S¹; the minimizer u is C¹ and is such that vanishes at one point.