Cicalese, MarcoOrlando, GianlucaRuf, Matthias2021-08-282021-08-282021-08-282021-01-0110.4171/IFB/456https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/180951WOS:000684626800002We study the asymptotic behavior of the N-clock model, a nearest neighbors ferromagnetic spin model on the d-dimensional cubic epsilon-lattice in which the spin field is constrained to take values in a discretization S-N of the unit circle S-1 consisting of N equispaced points. Our Gamma-convergence analysis consists of two steps: we first fix N and let the lattice spacing epsilon -> 0, obtaining an interface energy in the continuum defined on piecewise constant spin fields with values in S-N; at a second stage, we let N -> +infinity. The final result of this two-step limit process is an anisotropic total variation of S-1-valued vector fields of bounded variation.Mathematics, AppliedMathematicsgamma-convergencexy modeln-clock modelvector fields of bounded variation with values in the unit circleginzburg-landauspin systemsvariational analysisscrew dislocationsconvergencefunctionalsdiscretemetastabilityinterfacesenergytext::journal::journal article::research article