An operator-splitting optimization approach for phase-field simulation of equilibrium shapes of crystals

Computing equilibrium shapes of crystals (ESC) is a challenging problem in materials science that involves minimizing an orientation-dependent (i.e., anisotropic) surface energy functional subject to a prescribed mass constraint. The highly nonlinear and singular anisotropic terms in the problem make it very challenging from both the analytical and numerical aspects. Especially, when the strength of anisotropy is very strong (i.e., strongly anisotropic cases), the ESC will form some singular, sharp corners even if the surface energy function is smooth. Traditional numerical approaches, such as the $H^{-1}$ gradient flow, are unable to produce true sharp corners due to the necessary addition of a high-order regularization term that penalizes sharp corners and rounds them off. In this paper, we propose a new numerical method based on the Davis-Yin splitting (DYS) optimization algorithm to predict the ESC instead of using gradient flow approaches. We discretize the infinite-dimensional phase-field energy functional in the absence of regularization terms and transform it into a finite-dimensional constraint minimization problem. The resulting optimization problem is solved using the DYS method which automatically guarantees the mass-conservation and bound-preserving properties. We also prove the global convergence of the proposed algorithm. These desired properties are numerically observed. In particular, the proposed method can produce real sharp corners with satisfactory accuracy. Finally, we present numerous numerical results to demonstrate that the ESC can be well simulated under different types of anisotropic surface energies, which also confirms the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed method.