Bifurcation of global energy minimizers for a diffusion-aggregation model on sphere

Abstract

We consider a free energy functional defined on probability densities on the unit sphere $\mathbb{S}^d$, and investigate its global minimizers. The energy consists of two components: an entropy and a nonlocal interaction energy, which favour spreading and aggregation behaviour, respectively. We find a threshold value for the size of the attractive interactions, and establish the global energy minimizers in each case. The bifurcation at this threshold value is investigated. We also generalize the results to spaces consisting of an arbitrary number of spheres (e.g., the flat torus $\mathbb{S}^1 \times \mathbb{S}^1$).