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In this paper, we investigate the Beris-Edwards system for both biaxial and uniaxial $Q$-tensors with a general Landau-de Gennes energy density depending on four non-zero elastic constants. We prove existence of the strong solution of the Beris-Edwards system for uniaxial $Q$-tensors up to a maximal time. Furthermore, we prove that the strong solutions of the Beris-Edwards system for biaxial $Q$-tensors converge smoothly to the solution of the Beris-Edwards system for uniaxial $Q$-tensors up to its maximal existence time.

The Landau-de Gennes energy in nematic liquid crystals depends on four elastic constants $L_1$, $L_2$, $L_3$, $L_4$. In the case of $L_4\neq 0$, Ball and Majumdar (Mol. Cryst. Liq. Cryst., 2010) found an example that the original Landau-de Gennes energy functional in physics does not satisfy a coercivity condition, which causes a problem in mathematics to establish existence of energy minimizers. At first, we introduce a new Landau-de Gennes energy density with $L_4\neq 0$, which is equivalent to the original Landau-de Gennes density for uniaxial tensors and satisfies the coercivity condition for all $Q$-tensors. Secondly, we prove that solutions of the Landau-de Gennes system can approach a solution of the $Q$-tensor Oseen-Frank system without using energy minimizers. Thirdly, we develop a new approach to generalize the Nguyen and Zarnescu (Calc. Var. PDEs, 2013) convergence result to the case of non-zero elastic constants $L_2$, $L_3$, $L_4$., Comment: Revised vision. To appear in Calculus of Variations and Partial Differential Equations. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2007.11144

Biconservative hypersurfaces are hypersurfaces which have conservative stress-energy tensor with respect to the bienergy, containing all minimal and constant mean curvature hypersurfaces. The purpose of this paper is to study biconservative hypersurfaces $M^n$ with constant scalar curvature in a space form $N^{n+1}(c)$. We prove that every biconservative hypersurface with constant scalar curvature in $N^4(c)$ has constant mean curvature. Moreover, we prove that any biconservative hypersurface with constant scalar curvature in $N^5(c)$ is ether an open part of a certain rotational hypersurface or a constant mean curvature hypersurface. These solve an open problem proposed recently by D. Fetcu and C. Oniciuc for $n\leq4$., Comment: 20pages

In the Landau-de Gennes theory on nematic liquid crystals, the well-known Landau-de Gennes energy depends on four elastic constants; $L_1$, $L_2$, $L_3$, $L_4$. For the general case of $L_4\neq 0$, Ball-Majumdar \cite {BM} found an example that the Landau-de Gennes energy functional from physics literature \cite{MN} does not satisfy a coercivity condition, which causes a problem in mathematics to establish existence of energy minimizers. In order to solve this problem, we observe that the original third order term on $L_4$, proposed by Schiele and Trimper \cite{ST} in physics, is a linear combination of a fourth order term and a second order term. Therefore, we can propose a new Landau-de Gennes energy, which is equal to the original for uniaxial nematic $Q$-tensors. The new Landau-de Gennes energy with general elastic constants satisfies the coercivity condition for all $Q$-tensors, which establishes a new link between mathematical and physical theory. Similarly to the work of Majumdar-Zarnescu \cite{MZ}, we prove existence and convergence of minimizers of the new Landau-de Gennes energy. Moreover, we find a new way to study the limiting problem of the Landau-de Gennes system since the cross product method \cite{Chen} on the Ginzburg-Landau equation does not work for the Landau-de Gennes system., Comment: corrects several typos

A longstanding conjecture on biharmonic submanifolds, proposed by Chen in 1991, is that {\it any biharmonic submanifold in a Euclidean space is minimal}. In the case of a hypersurface $M^n$ in $\mathbb R^{n+1}$, Chen's conjecture was settled in the case of $n=2$ by Chen and Jiang around 1987 independently. Hasanis and Vlachos in 1995 settled Chen's conjecture for a hypersurface with $n=3$. However, the general Chen's conjecture on a hypersurface $M^n$ remains open for $n> 3$. In this paper, we settle Chen's conjecture for hypersurfaces in $\mathbb R^{5}$ for $n=4$., Comment: 23 pages

We establish the local well-posedness of the general Ericksen-Leslie system in liquid crystals with the initial velocity and director field in $H^1 \times H_b^2$. In particular, we prove that the solutions of the Ginzburg-Landau approximation system converge smoothly to the solution of the Ericksen-Leslie system for any $t \in (0,T^\ast)$ with a maximal existence time $T^\ast$ of the Ericksen- Leslie system.

We generalize the no-neck result of Qing-Tian \cite{QT} to show that there is no neck during blowing up for the $n$-harmonic flow as $t\to\infty$. As an application of the no-neck result, we settle a conjecture of Hungerb\"uhler \cite {Hung} by constructing an example to show that the $n$-harmonic map flow on an $n$-dimensional Riemannian manifold blows up in finite time for $n\geq 3$.

We investigate the Ericksen-Leslie system for the Oseen-Frank model with unequal Frank elastic constants in $\mathbb{R}^3$. To generalize the result of Hineman-Wang \cite{HW}, we prove existence of solutions to the Ericksen-Leslie system with initial data having small $L^3_{uloc}$-norm. In particular, we use a new idea to obtain a local $L^3$-estimate through interpolation inequalities and a covering argument, which is different from the one in \cite{HW}. Moreover, for uniqueness of solutions, we find a new way to remove the restriction on the Frank elastic constants by using the rotation invariant property of the Oseen-Frank density. We combine this with a method of Li-Titi-Xin \cite{LTX} to prove uniqueness of the $L^3_{uloc}$-solutions of the Ericksen-Leslie system assuming that the initial data has a finite energy.

In 1982, Uhlenbeck \cite {U2} established the well-known gauge fixing theorem, which has played a fundamental role for Yang-Mills theory. In this paper, we apply the idea of Uhlenbeck to establish a parabolic type of gauge fixing theorems for the Yang-Mills flow and prove existence of a weak solution of the Yang-Mills flow on a compact $n$-dimensional manifold with initial value $A_0$ in $W^{1,n/2}(M)$. When $n=4$, we improve a key lemma of Uhlenbeck (Lemma 2.7 of \cite {U2}) to prove uniqueness of weak solutions of the Yang-Mills flow on a four dimensional manifold.

Let $M^n$ be a biharmonic hypersurface with constant scalar curvature in a space form $\mathbb M^{n+1}(c)$. We show that $M^n$ has constant mean curvature if $c>0$ and $M^n$ is minimal if $c\leq0$, provided that the number of distinct principal curvatures is no more than 6. This partially confirms Chen's conjecture and Generalized Chen's conjecture. As a consequence, we prove that there exist no proper biharmonic hypersurfaces with constant scalar curvature in Euclidean space $\mathbb E^{n+1}$ or hyperbolic space $\mathbb H^{n+1}$ for $n<7$., Comment: 18 pages, some details were added

We introduce a rectified $n$-harmonic map flow from an n-dimensional closed Riemannian manifold to another closed Riemannian manifold. We prove existence of a global solution, which is regular except for a finite number of points, of the rectified n-harmonic map flow and establish an energy identity for the flow at each singular time. Finally, we present two applications of the rectified n-harmonic map flow to minimizing the n-energy functional and the Dirichlet energy functional in a homotopy class., Comment: 29 pages. A revised version

We prove that the Yang-Mills $\alpha$-functional satisfies the Palais-Smale condition. This guarantees the existence of critical points, which are called Yang-Mills $\alpha$-connections. It was shown by Hong, Tian and Yin in [10] (to appear in Comm. Math. Helv.) that as $\alpha \to 1$, a sequence of Yang-Mills $\alpha$-connections converges to a Yang-Mills connection away from finitely many points. We prove an energy identity for such a sequence of Yang-Mills $\alpha$-connections. As an application, we also prove an energy identity for the Yang-Mills flow at the maximal existence time., Comment: 25 pages (second version)

In this paper, we establish the local well-posedness and blow-up criteria of strong solutions to the Ericksen-Leslie system in $\Bbb R^3$ for the well-known Oseen-Frank model. The local existence of strong solutions to liquid crystal flows is obtained by using the Ginzburg-Landau approximation approach to guarantee the constraint that the direction vector of the fluid is of length one. We establish four kinds of blow-up criteria, including (i) the Serrin type; (ii) the Beal-Kato-Majda type; (iii) the mixed type, i.e., Serrin type condition for one field and Beal-Kato-Majda type condition on the other one; (iv) a new one, which characterizes the maximal existence time of the strong solutions to the Ericksen-Leslie system in terms of Serrin type norms of the strong solutions to the Ginzburg-Landau approximate system. Furthermore, we also prove that the strong solutions of the Ginzburg-Landau approximate system converge to the strong solution of the Ericksen-Leslie system up to the maximal existence time., Comment: 39 pages

In this paper, we introduce an \alpha -flow for the Yang-Mills functional in vector bundles over four dimensional Riemannian manifolds, and establish global existence of a unique smooth solution to the \alpha -flow with smooth initial value. We prove that the limit of solutions of the \alpha -flow as \alpha\to 1 is a weak solution to the Yang-Mills flow. By an application of the \alpha -flow, we then follow the idea of Sacks and Uhlenbeck to prove some existence results for Yang-Mills connections and improve the minimizing result of the Yang-Mills functional of Sedlacek., Comment: 36 pages

In the first part of this paper, we establish global existence of solutions of the liquid crystal (gradient) flow for the well-known Oseen-Frank model. The liquid crystal flow is a prototype of equations from the Ericksen-Leslie system in the hydrodynamic theory and generalizes the heat flow for harmonic maps into the 2-sphere. The Ericksen-Leslie system is a system of the Navier-Stokes equations coupled with the liquid crystal flow. In the second part of this paper, we also prove global existence of solutions of the Ericksen-Leslie system for a general Oseen-Frank model in $\Bbb R^2$., Comment: 39 pages

In this paper, we study an $\alpha$-flow for the Sack-Uhlenbeck functional on Riemannian surfaces and prove that the limiting map by the $\alpha$-flows is a weak solution to the harmonic map flow. By an application of the $\alpha$-flow, we present a simple proof of an energy identity of a minimizing sequence in each homotopy class., Comment: minor changes

In this paper, we study the relaxed energy for biharmonic maps from a $m$-dimensional domain into spheres. By an approximation method, we prove the existence of a minimizer of the relaxed energy of the Hessian energy, and that the minimizer is biharmonic and smooth outside a singular set $\Sigma$ of finite $(m-4)$-dimensional Hausdorff measure. Moreover, when $m=5$, we prove that the singular set $\Sigma$ is 1-rectifiable., Comment: 25 pages

We propose a new approximation for the relaxed energy $E$ of the Dirichlet energy and prove that the minimizers of the approximating functionals converge to a minimizer $u$ of the relaxed energy, and that $u$ is partially regular without using the concept of Cartesian currents. We also use the same approximation method to study the variational problem of the relaxed energy for the Faddeev model and prove the existence of minimizers for the relaxed energy $\tilde{E}_F$ in the class of maps with Hopf degree $\pm 1$., Comment: 23 pages

We introduce the gradient flow of the Seiberg-Witten functional on a compact, orientable Riemannian 4-manifold and show the global existence of a unique smooth solution to the flow. The flow converges uniquely in $C^\infty$ up to gauge to a critical point of the Seiberg-Witten functional.

For $n\ge 5$ and $k\ge 4$, we show that any minimizing biharmonic map from $\Omega\subset R^n$ to $S^k$ is smooth off a closed set whose Hausdorff dimension is at most $n-5$. When $n=5$ and $k=4$, for a parameter $\lambda\in [0,1]$ we introduce a $\lambda$-relaxed energy $\H_\lambda$ for the Hessian energy for maps in $W^{2,2}(\Omega,S^4)$ so that each minimizer $u_\lambda$ of $\H_\lambda$ is also a biharmonic map. We also estabilish the existence and partial regularity of a minimizer of $\H_\lambda$ for $\lambda\in [0,1)$., Comment: 28 pages