We consider the mean curvature flow of compact convex surfaces in Euclidean $3$-space with free boundary lying on an arbitrary convex barrier surface with bounded geometry. When the initial surface is sufficiently convex, depending only on the geometry of the barrier, the flow contracts the surface to a point in finite time. Moreover, the solution is asymptotic to a shrinking half-sphere lying in a half space. This extends, in dimension two, the convergence result of Stahl for umbilic barriers to general convex barriers. We introduce a new perturbation argument to establish fundamental convexity and pinching estimates for the flow. Our result can be compared to a celebrated convergence theorem of Huisken for mean curvature flow of convex hypersurfaces in Riemannian manifolds.
We prove that the Ricci flow that contracts a hyperbolic cusp has curvature decay like one over time squared. In order to do this, we prove a new Li-Yau type differential Harnack inequality for Ricci flow on surfaces.
We consider compact convex hypersurfaces contracting by functions of their curvature. Under the mean curvature flow, uniformly convex smooth initial hypersurfaces evolve to remain smooth and uniformly convex, and contract to points after finite time. The same holds if the initial data is only weakly convex or non-smooth, and the limiting shape at the final time is spherical. We provide a surprisingly large family of flows for which such results fail, by a variety of mechanisms: Uniformly convex hypersurfaces may become non-convex, and smooth ones may develop curvature singularities; even where…
A recent article by Li and Lv considered fully nonlinear contraction of convex hypersurfaces by certain nonhomogeneous functions of curvature, showing convergence to points in finite time in cases where the speed is a function of a degree-one homogeneous, concave and inverse concave function of the principle curvatures. In this article we consider self-similar solutions to these and related curvature flows that are not homogeneous in the principle curvatures, finding various situations where closed, convex curvature-pinched hypersurfaces contracting self-similarly are necessarily spheres.
We consider two types of $p$-centro affine flows on smooth, centrally symmetric, closed convex planar curves, $p$-contracting, respectively, $p$-expanding. Here $p$ is an arbitrary real number greater than 1. We show that, under any $p$-contracting flow, the evolving curves shrink to a point in finite time and the only homothetic solutions of the flow are ellipses centered at the origin. Furthermore, the normalized curves with enclosed area $π$ converge, in the Hausdorff metric, to the unit circle modulo SL(2). As a $p$-expanding flow is, in a certain way, dual to a contracting one, we prove t…
A convex surface contracting by a strictly monotone, homogeneous degree one function of curvature remains smooth until it contracts to a point in finite time, and is asymptotically spherical in shape. No assumptions are made on the concavity of the speed as a function of principal curvatures.
We consider convex hypersurfaces for which the ratio of principal curvatures at each point is bounded by a function of the maximum principal curvature with limit 1 at infinity. We prove that the ratio of circumradius to inradius is bounded by a function of the circumradius with limit 1 at zero. We apply this result to the motion of hypersurfaces by arbitrary speeds which are smooth homogeneous functions of the principal curvatures of degree greater than one. For smooth, strictly convex initial hypersurfaces with ratio of principal curvatures sufficiently close to one at each point, we prove th…
We prove existence and stability of smooth entire strictly convex spacelike hypersurfaces of prescribed Gauss curvature in Minkowski space. The proof is based on barrier constructions and local a priori estimates.
In this paper we study a contracting flow of closed, convex hypersurfaces in the Euclidean space $\mathbb R^{n+1}$ with speed $f r^α K$, where $K$ is the Gauss curvature, $r$ is the distance from the hypersurface to the origin, and $f$ is a positive and smooth function. If $α\ge n+1$, we prove that the flow exists for all time and converges smoothly after normalisation to a soliton, which is a sphere centred at the origin if $f \equiv 1$. Our argument provides a parabolic proof in the smooth category for the classical Aleksandrov problem, and resolves the dual q-Minkowski problem introduced by…
We show Bernstein type results for the entire self-shrinking solutions to Lagrangian mean curvature flow in $(\mathbb{R}^n\times\mathbb{R}^n, g_τ)$. The proofs rely on a priori estimates and barriers construction.
We prove existence in the Minkowski space of entire spacelike hypersurfaces with constant negative scalar curvature and given set of lightlike directions at infinity; we also construct the entire scalar curvature flow with prescribed set of lightlike directions at infinity, and prove that the flow converges to a spacelike hypersurface with constant scalar curvature. The proofs rely on barriers construction and a priori estimates.
In this paper, we consider the contracting curvature flow of smooth closed surfaces in $3$-dimensional hyperbolic space and in $3$-dimensional sphere. In the hyperbolic case, we show that if the initial surface $M_0$ has positive scalar curvature, then along the flow by a positive power $α$ of the mean curvature $H$, the evolving surface $M_t$ has positive scalar curvature for $t>0$. By assuming $α\in [1,4]$, we can further prove that $M_t$ contracts a point in finite time and become spherical as the final time is approached. We also show the same conclusion for the flows by powers of scalar c…
In this paper, by using new auxiliary functions, we study a class of contracting flows of closed, star-shaped hypersurfaces in $\mathbb{R}^{n+1}$ with speed $r^{\fracαβ}σ_k^{\frac{1}β}$, where $σ_k$ is the $k$-th elementary symmetric polynomial of the principal curvatures, $α$, $β$ are positive constants and $r$ is the distance from points on the hypersurface to the origin. We obtain convergence results under some assumptions of $k$, $α$, $β$. When $k\geq2$, $0<β\leq 1$, $α\geq β+k$, we prove that the $k$-convex solution to the flow exists for all time and converges smoothly to a sphere after …
We consider graphical solutions to mean curvature flow and obtain a stability result for homothetically expanding solutions coming out of cones of positive mean curvature: If another solution is initially close to the cone at infinity, then the difference to the homothetically expanding solution becomes small for large times. The proof involves the construction of appropriate barriers.
We study stability of non-compact gradient Kaehler-Ricci flow solitons with positive holomorphic bisectional curvature. Our main result is that any compactly supported perturbation and appropriately decaying perturbations of the Kaehler potential of the soliton will converge to the original soliton under Kaehler-Ricci flow as time tends to infinity. To obtain this result, we construct appropriate barriers and introduce an L^p-norm that decays for these barriers with non-negative Ricci curvature.
We prove the existence and uniqueness of radial graphs over a given domain of $\mathbb{S}^{n}$ having boundary on the sphere $\mathbb{S}^{n}$ and whose mean curvature at every point equals a prescribed positive function satisfying suitable barrier-type and monotonicity conditions.
We consider an embedded convex ancient solution $Γ_t$ to the curve shortening flow in $\mathbb{R}^2$. We prove that there are only two possibilities: the family $Γ_t$ is either the family of contracting circles, which is a type I ancient solution, or the family of evolving Angenent ovals, which correspond to a type II ancient solution to the curve shortening flow. We also give a necessary and sufficient curvature condition for an embedded, closed ancient solution to the curve shortening flow to be convex.
We study and solve the Dirichlet problem for graphs of prescribed mean curvature in $\mathbb R^{n+1}$ over general domains $Ω$ without requiring a mean convexity assumption. By using pieces of nodoids as barriers we first give sufficient conditions for the solvability in case of zero boundary values. Applying a result by Schulz and Williams we can then also solve the Dirichlet problem for boundary values satisfying a Lipschitz condition.
We construct smooth mean curvature flows with surgery that approximate weak mean curvature flows with only spherical and neck-pinch singularities. This is achieved by combining the recent work of Choi-Haslhofer-Hershkovits, and Choi-Haslhofer-Hershkovits-White, establishing canonical neighbourhoods of such singularities, with suitable barriers to flows with surgery. A limiting argument is then used to control these approximating flows. We conclude by improving the entropy bound on the low-entropy Schoenflies conjecture.
In this note we study a large class of mean curvature type flows of graphs in product manifold $N\times R$ where N is a closed Riemann- ian manifold. Their speeds are the mean curvature of graphs plus a prescribed function. We establish long time existence and uniformly convergence of those flows with a barrier condition and a condition on the derivative of prescribed function with respect to the height. As an application we construct a weighted mean curvature flow in large classes of warped product manifolds which evolves each graph into a totally ge- odesic slice
We study the phenomenon of Type-II curvature blow-up in mean curvature flows of rotationally symmetric noncompact embedded hypersurfaces. Using analytic techniques based on formal matched asymptotics and the construction of upper and lower barrier solutions enveloping formal solutions with prescribed behavior, we show that for each initial hypersurface considered, a mean curvature flow solution exhibits the following behavior near the "vanishing" time $T$: (1) The highest curvature concentrates at the tip of the hypersurface (an umbilic point), and for each choice of the parameter $γ>1/2$, the…
During his experiments W. D. Ristenpart made a very remarkable discovery. If two oppositely charged droplets of fluid are close enough, at first they attract each other and touch eventually. Surprisingly after that the droplets are repelled from each other, if the initial strength of the charges is high enough. Otherwise they coalesce and form a big drop, as one might expect. We present a theoretical model for this observation, using mean curvature flow. With the help of appropriate barriers for the flow we can predict the observed droplet behaviour. This shows that, contrary to general belief…
Existence of disks with prescribed mean curvature and contact angle in arbitrary codimension
School of Mathematics and Statistics, Shaanxi Normal University（陕西师范大学数学与统计学院）；School of Mathematical Sciences, Shanghai Jiao Tong University（上海交通大学数学科学学院）
We present a general existence proof for a wide class of non-linear elliptic equations which can be applied to problems with barrier conditions without specifying any assumptions guaranteeing the uniqueness or local uniqueness of particular solutions. As an application we prove the existence of closed hypersurfaces with curvature prescribed in the tangent bundle of an ambient Riemannian manifold $N$ without supposing any sign condition on the sectional curvatures $K_N$. A curvature flow wouldn't work in this situation, neither the method of successive approximation.
We investigate the boundary behavior of variational solutions of Dirichlet problems for prescribed mean curvature equations at smooth boundary points where certain boundary curvature conditions are satisfied (which preclude the existence of local barrier functions). We prove that if the Dirichlet boundary data $ϕ$ is continuous at such a point (and possibly nowhere else), then the solution of the variational problem is continuous at this point.
We consider nonlocal curvature functionals associated with positive interaction kernels, and we show that local anisotropic mean curvature functionals can be retrieved in a blow-up limit from them. As a consequence, we prove that the viscosity solutions to the rescaled nonlocal geometric flows locally uniformly converge to the viscosity solution to the anisotropic mean curvature motion. The result is achieved by combining a compactness argument and a set-theoretic approach related to the theory of De Giorgi's barriers for evolution equations.
In this paper, we establish the existence and uniqueness theorem of entire solutions to the Lagrangian mean curvature equations with prescribed asymptotic behavior at infinity. The phase functions are assumed to be supercritical and converge to a constant in a certain rate at infinity. The basic idea is to establish uniform estimates for the approximating problems defined on bounded domains and the main ingredient is to construct appropriate subsolutions and supersolutions as barrier functions. We also prove a nonexistence result to show the convergence rate of the phase functions is optimal.
Nonconvex Sublevel Sets For The Planar Translating Mean Curvature Equation
University of Science and Technology of China（中国科学技术大学）；Institute of Mathematics, Academy of Mathematics and Systems Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院数学与系统科学研究院）
