We analyze an elastic surface energy which was recently introduced by G. Napoli and L. Vergori to model thin films of nematic liquid crystals. We show how a novel approach in modeling the surface's extrinsic geometry leads to considerable differences with respect to the classical intrinsic energy. Our results concern three connected aspects: i) using methods of the calculus of variations, we establish a relation between the existence of minimizers and the topology of the surface; ii) we prove, by a Ginzburg-Landau approximation, the well-posedness of the gradient flow of the energy; iii) in the case of a parametrized torus we obtain a stronger characterization of global and local minimizers, which we supplement with numerical experiments.

The topology and the geometry of a surface play a fundamental role in determining the equilibrium configurations of thin films of liquid crystals. We propose here a theoretical analysis of a recently introduced surface Frank energy, in the case of two-dimensional nematic liquid crystals coating a toroidal particle. Our aim is to show how a different modeling of the effect of extrinsic curvature acts as a selection principle among equilibria of the classical energy, and how new configurations emerge. In particular, our analysis predicts the existence of new stable equilibria with complex windings.

Periodic orbits and associated bifurcations of singularly perturbed state-dependent delay differential equations (DDEs) are studied when the profiles of the periodic orbits contain jump discontinuities in the singular limit. A definition of singular solution is introduced which is based on a continuous parametrisation of the possibly discontinuous limiting solution. This reduces the construction of the limiting profiles to an algebraic problem. A model two state-dependent delay differential equation is studied in detail and periodic singular solutions are constructed with one and two local maxima per period. A complete characterisation of the conditions on the parameters for these singular solutions to exist facilitates an investigation of bifurcation structures in the singular case revealing folds and possible cusp bifurcations. Sophisticated boundary value techniques are used to numerically compute the bifurcation diagram of the state-dependent DDE when the perturbation parameter is close to zero. This confirms that the solutions and bifurcations constructed in the singular case persist when the perturbation parameter is nonzero, and hence demonstrates that the solutions constructed using our singular solution definition are useful and relevant to the singularly perturbed problem. Fold and cusp bifurcations are found very close to the parameter values predicted by the singular solution theory, and we also find period-doubling bifurcations as well as periodic orbits with more than two local maxima per period, and explain the alignment between the folds on different bifurcation branches.