Radial symmetry on three-dimensional shells in the Landau-de Gennes theory

We study the radial-hedgehog solution on a three-dimensional (3D) spherical shell with radial boundary conditions, within the Landau-de Gennes theory for nematic liquid crystals. We prove that the radial-hedgehog solution is the unique minimizer of the Landau-de Gennes energy in two separate regimes: (i) for thin shells when the temperature is below the critical nematic supercooling temperature and (ii) for a fixed shell width at sufficiently low temperatures. In case (i), we provide explicit geometry-dependent criteria for the global minimality of the radial-hedgehog solution. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.