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 study a variant of the mean curvature flow for closed, convex hypersurfaces where the normal velocity is a nonhomogeneous function of the principal curvatures. We show that if the initial hypersurface satisfies a certain pinching condition, then this is preserved and the flow converges to a sphere under rescaling.
A recent article Li and Lv considered contraction of convex hypersurfaces by certain nonhomogeneous functions of curvature, showing convergence to points in finite time in certain 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 extend the result to various other cases that are analogous to those considered in other earlier work, and we show that in all cases, where sufficient pinching conditions are assumed on the initial hypersurface, then under suitable rescaling the final point is asymptoti…
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 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 convexi…
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…
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 introduce and study generalized $1$-harmonic equations (1.1). Using some ideas and techniques in studying $1$-harmonic functions from [W1] (2007), and in studying nonhomogeneous $1$-harmonic functions on a cocompact set from [W2, (9.1)] (2008), we find an analytic quantity $w$ in the generalized $1$-harmonic equations (1.1) on a domain in a Riemannian $n$-manifold that affects the behavior of weak solutions of (1.1), and establish its link with the geometry of the domain. We obtain, as applications, some gradient bounds and nonexistence results for the inverse mean curvature flow, Liouville…
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…
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 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.
