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The Ginzburg - Landau equations play a fundamental role in various areas of physics, from superconductivity to elementary particles. They present the natural and simplest extension of the Laplace equation to line bundles. Their non-abelian generalizations - Yang-Mills-Higgs and Seiberg-Witten equations have applications in geometry and topology.
Of a special interest are the least energy (per unit volume) solutions of the Ginzburg - Landau equations. These turned out to have a beautiful structure of (magnetic) vortex lattices discovered by A.A. Abrikosov. (Their discovery was recognized a Nobel prize. Finite energy excitations are magnetic vortices, called Nielsen-Olesen or Nambu strings, in the particle physics.)
I will review recent results about the vortex lattice solutions and their relation to the energy minimizing solutions on Riemann surfaces and, if time permits, to the microscopic (BCS) theory.