Speaker: Jesenko Vukadinovic
Title: The Doi-Smoluchowski Equation Arising in the Modeling of Nematic Liquid Crystalline Polymers
Affiliation: University of Chicago
Date: Thursday, January 19, 2006.
Place and Time: Room 102 - Love Building, 3:35-4:30 pm.
Refreshments: Room 204 - Love Building, 3:00 pm.

Abstract. The Doi-Hess model has been successful in predicting many rheological and dynamical features of solutions of rod-like polymeric molecules which are capable of forming liquid crystals. Despite an abundance of experimental, numerical and semi-analytical studies, rigorous mathematical results remain scarce. In this talk, I will attempt to give a review of the model, and recent rigorous mathematical results concerning the Gevrey regularity of the Smoluchowski equation, and the isotropic-nematic phase transition.