Nonlinear elastic free energies and gradient Young-Gibbs measures

Abstract: We investigate, in a fairly general setting, the limit of large volume equilibrium Gibbs measures for elasticity type Hamiltonians with clamped boundary conditions. The existence of a quasiconvex free energy, forming the large deviations rate functional, is shown using a new interpolation lemma for partition functions. The local behaviour of the Gibbs measures can be parametrized by Young measures on the space of gradient Gibbs measures. In view of unboundedness of the state space, the crucial tool here is an exponential tightness estimate that holds for a vast class of potentials and the construction of suitable compact sets of gradient Gibbs measures.