On the optimality of stripes in a variational model with non-local interactions

We study pattern formation for a variational model displaying competition between a local term penalizing interfaces and a non-local term favoring oscillations. By means of a Γ -convergence analysis, we show that as the parameter J converges to a critical value J_c, the minimizers converge to periodic one-dimensional stripes. A similar analysis has been previously performed by other authors for related discrete systems. In that context, a central point is that each “angle” comes with a strictly positive contribution to the energy. Since this is not anymore the case in the continuous setting, we need to overcome this difficulty by slicing arguments and a rigidity result.