Bifurcation and stability of stationary shear flows of Ericksen-Leslie model for nematic liquid crystals

Abstract: In this work, focusing on a critical case for shear flows of nematic liquid crystals, we investigate multiplicity and stability of stationary solutions via the parabolic Ericksen-Leslie system. We establish a one-to-one correspondence between the set of the stationary solutions with the set of solutions of an algebraic equation. The existence of multiple stationary solutions is established through countably many saddle-node bifurcations at critical shear speeds for the algebraic equation. We then establish similar local bifurcations for the stationary solutions; more precisely, (i) for each critical shear speed, there is a unique stationary solution, the stationary solution disappears for smaller shear speed, and two stationary solutions nearby bifurcate for larger shear speed; (ii) more importantly, under a generic condition, there is exactly one zero eigenvalue for the linearization of the shear flow at the critical stationary solution, and the zero eigenvalue bifurcates to a negative eigenvalue for one of the two stationary solutions and to a positive eigenvalue for the other stationary solution. These results extend and are motivated by the works of Dorn and Liu [{\em J. Differential Equations {\bf 253} (2012), 3184-3210}] and of Jiao, et. al. [{\em J. Diff. Dyn. Syst. {\bf 34} (2022), 239-269}].