First I have to say I asked this question in physicsSE but afterwards somebody advised me to ask it here. Do I have to remove it from SE ?
I'm trying to get the solution of the Cahn-Hilliard equation in 1d with a certain mass C. We have two components, and let's assume we have the relation c1+c2=1.Hence we take only the variable c=c1.
The total energy with the Lagrange parameter ˜μ (which is a sort of non-local chemical potential) writes :
F[c(r)]=∫{f(c(r))+ϵ22(∇c)2}dΩ−˜μ∫(c(r)−C)dΩ
In 1 dimension :
δFδc=0⟹dfdc−˜μ−ϵ2d2cdx2=0
Multiplying with
dc/dx leads to :
ϵ√2dc√f−˜μ(c−C)=dx
Symmetry imposes
c′(0)=0⟹f(c(0))−˜μ(c(0)−C)=0
At infinity, we also have
c′(∞)=0;c(∞)=−1 (or
0 depending on the potential you're using).
This equation is solvable for the classical Cahn-Hilliard with f−˜μ(c−C)=(c2−c20)2. The classical way is to get x(c) and then invert it. You find a tanh solution. But this solution does not respect the symmetry condition c′(0)=0 (right you can make it very very close to 0 by building manually a solution with tanh functions... but I'm looking for an exact solution of the equation). Meaning it only gives the profile of an interface between 2 semi-infinite media.
What I don't understand is how to get a profile respecting the symmetry condition, meaning with a nucleus/aggregate of one phase into the other phase. Meaning a phase of finite size (for example c=1) into the other phase (c=−1).
I'm wondering wether my problem is overconstrained since the equation ϵ√2dc√f−˜μ(c−C)=dx admits only one new constant and there are 3 constraints : c′(0)=c′(±∞)=0 and ∫Rcdx=C (about this one I have a doubt since C enters the potential).
Could you help please ?
I'm also surprised I didn't find any litterature about this problem.
REMARK : I was wondering maybe there was something missing in the equations. But actually no, since the dynamical equation used in simulations is :∂tc=∇.(M(c)∇((f′(c)−~μ)−ϵ2Δc)), so it's logical that the static picture is given by (f′(c)−~μ)−ϵ2Δc=0.
However what could be is that indeed the system is overconstrained and there is no stable solution. Fortunately the tanh function provides a landscape that is "quasi-stable" (very very slowly unstable) in the sense that beyond the size of the interface it's as if we had a semi-infinite domain since we are very close to it and that's why we use this model in simulations.
What do you think about it ? If this proposition were to be right, what could be a formalism with whom we could build a solution for a finite domain ?