A Natural Min-Max Construction for Ginzburg-Landau Functionals

Abstract: We use min-max techniques to produce nontrivial solutions $u_{\epsilon}:M\to \mathbb{R}^2$ of the Ginzburg-Landau equation $\Delta u_{\epsilon}+\frac{1}{\epsilon^2}(1-|u_{\epsilon}|^2)u_{\epsilon}=0$ on a given compact Riemannian manifold, whose energy grows like $|\log\epsilon|$ as $\epsilon\to 0$. When the degree one cohomology $H^1_{dR}(M)=0$, we show that the energy of these solutions concentrates on a nontrivial stationary, rectifiable $(n-2)$-varifold $V$.