We classify closed convex $α$-curve shortening flows for sub-affine-critical powers $α\leq \frac{1}{3}$. In addition, we show that closed convex smooth finite entropy $α$-curve shortening flows with $\frac{1}{3}<α$ is a shrinking circle. After normalization, the ancient flows satisfying the above conditions converge exponentially fast to smooth closed convex shrinkers at the backward infinity. In particular, when $α=\frac{1}{k^2-1}$ with $3\leq k \in \mathbb{N}$, the round circle shrinker has non-trivial Jacobi fields, but the ancient flows do not evolve along the Jacobi fields.
In this paper we classify convex compact ancient solutions to the affine curve shortening flow: namely, any convex compact ancient solution to the affine curve shortening flow must be a shrinking ellipse. The method combines a rescaling argument inspired by \cite{Wang}, affine invariance of the equation and monotonicity of the affine isoperimetric ratio. We will give two proofs. The essential ideas are related, but the first one uses level set represenation of the evolution. The second proof employs Schauder's estimates, and it also provides a new simple proof for the corresponding classificat…
We construct noncompact solutions to the affine normal flow of hypersurfaces, and show that all ancient solutions must be either ellipsoids (shrinking solitons) or paraboloids (translating solitons). We also provide a new proof of the existence of a hyperbolic affine sphere asymptotic to the boundary of a convex cone containing no lines, which is originally due to Cheng-Yau. The main techniques are local second-derivative estimates for a parabolic Monge-Ampere equation modeled on those of Ben Andrews and Gutierrez-Huang, a decay estimate for the cubic form under the affine normal flow due to B…
We study properly immersed ancient solutions of the codimension one mean curvature flow in $n$-dimensional Euclidean space, and classify the convex hulls of the subsets of space reached by any such flow. In particular, it follows that any compact convex ancient mean curvature flow can only have a slab, a halfspace or all of space as the closure of its set of reach. The proof proceeds via a bi-halfspace theorem (also known as a wedge theorem) for ancient solutions derived from a parabolic Omori-Yau maximum principle for ancient mean curvature flows.
A well-known question of Perelman concerns the classification of noncompact ancient solutions to the Ricci flow in dimension $3$ which have positive sectional curvature and are $κ$-noncollapsed. In this paper, we solve the analogous problem for mean curvature flow in $\mathbb{R}^3$, and prove that the rotationally symmetric bowl soliton is the only noncompact ancient solution of mean curvature flow in $\mathbb{R}^3$ which is strictly convex and noncollapsed.
We prove rigidity theorems for ancient solutions of geometric flows of immersed submanifolds. Specifically, we find pinching conditions on the second fundamental form that characterize the shrinking sphere among compact ancient solutions for the mean curvature flow in codimension greater than one, and for some nonlinear curvature flows of hypersurfaces.
We show existence of ancient solutions to the rescaled mean curvature flow starting from a given asymptotically conical self-expander. These are examples of mean curvature flows coming out of cones that are not self-similar. We also show a strong uniqueness theorem when the cone is generic and use it to classify mean curvature flows coming out of generic cones of small entropy in low dimensions.
We prove the existence of closed convex ancient solutions to curvature flows which become more and more oval for large negative times. The speed function is a general symmetric function of the principal curvatures, homogeneous of degree greater than one. This generalises previous work on the mean curvature flow and other one-homogeneous curvature flows. As an auxiliary result, we prove a new theorem on the convergence to a round point of convex rotationally symmetric hypersurfaces satisfying a suitable constraint on the curvatures.
Motivated by the limiting behavior of an explicit class of compact ancient curve shortening flows, we prove codimension bounds for ancient mean curvature flows by their tangent flow at $-\infty$, generalizing a theorem for cylinders in [CM19b]. In the case of the $m$-covered circle, we apply this bound to prove a strong rigidity theorem. Furthermore, we extend this paradigm by showing that under the assumption of sufficiently rapid convergence, a compact ancient mean curvature flow is identical to its tangent flow at $-\infty$.
We address the classification of ancient solutions to the Gauss curvature flow under the assumption that the solutions are contained in a cylinder of bounded cross section. For each cylinder of convex bounded cross-section, we show that there are only two ancient solutions which are asymptotic to this cylinder: the non-compact translating soliton and the compact oval solution obtained by gluing two translating solitons approaching each other from time $-\infty$ from two opposite ends.
X.-J. Wang proved a series of remarkable results on the structure of convex ancient solutions to mean curvature flow. Some of his results do not appear to be widely known, however, possibly due to the technical nature of his arguments and his exploitation of methods which are not widely used in mean curvature flow. In this expository article, we present Wang's structure theory and some of its consequences. We shall simplify some of Wang's analysis by making use of the monotonicity formula and the differential Harnack inequality, and obtain an important additional structure result by exploiting…
We consider geometric flows of hypersurfaces expanding by a function of the extrinsic curvature and we show that the homothethic sphere is the unique solution of the flow which converges to a point at the initial time. The result does not require assumptions on the speed other than positivity and monotonicity and it is proved using a reflection argument. Our theorem shows that expanding flows exhibit stronger spherical rigidity, if compared with the classification results of ancient solutions in the contractive case.
In our previous work we showed that for an ancient solution to the Ricci flow with nonnegative curvature operator, assuming bounded geometry on one time slice, bounded entropy implies noncollapsing on all scales. In this paper we prove the implication in the other direction, that for an ancient solution with bounded nonnegative curvature operator, noncollapsing implies bounded entropy. Hence we prove Perelman's assertion under the assumption of bounded geometry on one time slice. In particular, for ancient solutions of dimension three, we need only to assume bounded curvature. We also establis…
We construct embedded ancient solutions to mean curvature flow related to certain classes of unstable minimal hypersurfaces in $\mathbb{R}^{n+1}$ for $n \geq 2$. These provide examples of mean convex yet nonconvex ancient solutions that are not solitons, meaning that they do not evolve by rigid motions or homotheties. Moreover, we construct embedded eternal solutions to mean curvature flow in $\mathbb{R}^{n+1}$ for $n \geq 2$. These eternal solutions are not solitons, are $O(n)\times O(1)$-invariant, and are mean convex yet nonconvex. They flow out of the catenoid and are the rotation of a pro…
In this paper, we consider ancient noncollapsed mean curvature flows $M_t=\partial K_t\subset \mathbb{R}^{n+1}$ that do not split off a line. It follows from general theory that the blowdown of any time-slice, $\lim_{λ\to 0} λK_{t_0}$, is at most $n-1$ dimensional. Here, we show that the blowdown is in fact at most $n-2$ dimensional. Our proof is based on fine cylindrical analysis, which generalizes the fine neck analysis that played a key role in many recent papers. Moreover, we show that in the uniformly $k$-convex case, the blowdown is at most $k-2$ dimensional. This generalizes recent resu…
We construct ancient solutions to Curve Shortening in the plane whose total curvature is uniformly bounded by gluing together an arbitrary chain of given Grim Reapers along their common asymptotes.
In this paper we investigate the rigidity of ancient solutions of the mean curvature flow with arbitrary codimension in space forms. We first prove that under certain sharp asymptotic pointwise curvature pinching condition the ancient solution in a sphere is either a shrinking spherical cap or a totally geodesic sphere. Then we show that under certain pointwise curvature pinching condition the ancient solution in a hyperbolic space is a family of shrinking spheres. We also obtain a rigidity result for ancient solutions in a nonnegatively curved space form under an asymptotic integral curvature…
We study solutions of the mean curvature flow which are defined for all negative curvature times, usually called ancient solutions. We give various conditions ensuring that a closed convex ancient solution is a shrinking sphere. Examples of such conditions are: a uniform pinching condition on the curvatures, a suitable growth bound on the diameter or a reverse isoperimetric inequality. We also study the behaviour of uniformly k-convex solutions, and consider generalizations to ancient solutions immersed in a sphere.
We prove several sharp one-sided pinching estimates for immersed and embedded hypersurfaces evolving by various fully nonlinear, one-homogeneous curvature flows by the method of Stampacchia iteration. These include sharp estimates for the largest principal curvature and the inscribed curvature ('cylindrical estimates') for flows by concave speeds and a sharp estimate for the exscribed curvature for flows by convex speeds. Making use of a recent idea of Huisken and Sinestrari, we then obtain corresponding estimates for ancient solutions. In particular, this leads to various characterisations of…
In this paper, we study $κ$-noncollapsed ancient solutions to the Ricci flow with nonnegative curvature operator in higher dimensions. We impose one further assumption: one of the asymptotic shrinking gradient Ricci solitons is the standard cylinder $\mathbb{S}^{n-1}\times\mathbb{R}$. By making use of the properties of such ancient solutions, we generalize part one of Brendle \cite{brendle2018ancient} to higher dimensions, that is, every noncompact $κ$-noncollapsed rotationally symmetric ancient solution to the Ricci flow with bounded positive curvature operator must be the Bryant soliton.
We prove that there exists, in every dimension, a unique (modulo rotations about the origin and time translations) convex ancient mean curvature flow in the ball with free boundary on the sphere.
In this paper we prove classification results for gradient shrinking Ricci solitons under two invariant conditions, namely nonnegative orthogonal bisectional curvature and weakly PIC1, without any curvature bound. New results on ancient solutions for the Ricci and Kähler-Ricci flow are also obtained. The main new feature is that no curvature upper bound is assumed.
Bounds of total curvature and entropy are two common conditions placed on mean curvature flows. We show that these two hypotheses are equivalent for the class of ancient complete embedded smooth planar curve shortening flows, which are one-dimensional mean curvature flows. As an application, we give a short proof of the uniqueness of tangent flow at infinity of an ancient smooth complete non-compact curve shortening flow with finite entropy embedded in $\mathbb{R}^2$.
We show the existence of non-homothetic ancient flows by powers of curvature embedded in $\mathbb{R}^2$ whose entropy is finite. We determine the Morse indices and kernels of the linearized operator of shrinkers to the flows and construct ancient flows by using unstable eigenfunctions of the linearized operator.
Mean curvature flow for isoparametric submanifolds in Euclidean spaces and spheres was studied by the authors in [LT]. In this paper, we will show that all these solutions are ancient solutions. We also discuss rigidity of ancient mean curvature flows for hypersurfaces in spheres and its relation to the Chern's conjecture on the norm of the second fundamental forms of minimal hypersurfaces in spheres.
Ancient solutions of the Ricci flow arise naturally as models for singularity formation. There has been significant progress towards the classification of such solutions under natural geometric assumptions. Nonnegatively curved solutions in dimensions 2 and 3, and uniformly PIC solutions in higher dimensions are now well understood. We consider ancient solutions of arbitrary dimension which are complete and have Type~I curvature growth. We show that a $κ$-noncollapsed Type~I ancient solution which is noncompact and has nonnegative sectional curvature necessarily splits at least one Euclidean f…
We construct $O(1)\times O(n)$-invariant ancient ``pancake'' solutions to a large and natural class of fully nonlinear curvature flows. We then establish that these are the unique $O(n)$-invariant ancient solutions to the corresponding flow which sweep out a slab by carrying out a fine asymptotic analysis for this class. This extends the main results of \cite{BLT} to a surprisingly general class of flows.
In this paper we consider closed non-collapsed ancient solutions to the mean curvature flow ($n \ge 2$) which are uniformly two-convex. We prove that any two such ancient solutions are the same up to translations and scaling. In particular, they must coincide up to translations and scaling with the rotationally symmetric closed ancient non-collapsed solution constructed by Brian White in (2000), and by Robert Haslhofer and Or Hershkovits in (2016).
An explicit representation formula for all positive ancient solutions of the heat equation in the Euclidean case is found. In the Riemannian case with nonnegative Ricci curvature, a similar but less explicit formula is also found. Here it is proven that any positive ancient solution is the standard Laplace transform of positive solutions of the family of elliptic operator $Δ- s$ with $s>0$. Further relaxation of the curvature assumption is also possible. It is also shown that the linear space of ancient solutions of polynomial growth has finite dimension and these solutions are polynomials in …
For any complete noncompact K$\ddot{a}$hler manifold with nonnegative and bounded holomorphic bisectional curvature,we provide the necessary and sufficient condition for non-ancient solution to the Ricci flow in this paper.
We study solutions of high codimension mean curvature flow defined for all negative times, usually referred to as ancient solutions. We show that any compact ancient solution whose second fundamental form satisfies a certain natural pinching condition must be a family of shrinking spheres. Andrews and Baker have shown that initial submanifolds satisfying this pinching condition, which generalises the notion of convexity, converge to round points under the flow. As an application, we use our result to simplify their proof.
We show that every $n$-dimensional, $κ$-noncollapsed, noncompact, complete ancient solution to the Ricci flow with uniformly PIC for $n=4$ or $n\ge 12$ has weakly PIC$_2$ and bounded curvature. Combining this with earlier results, we prove that any such solution is isometric to either a family of shrinking cylinders (or a quotient thereof) or the Bryant soliton. Also, we classify all complex 2-dimensional, $κ$-noncollapsed, complete ancient solutions to the Kähler Ricci flow with weakly PIC.
Ancient solutions of Lagrangian mean curvature flow in C^n naturally arise as Type II blow-ups. In this extended note we give structural and classification results for such ancient solutions in terms of their blow-down and, motivated by the Thomas-Yau Conjecture, focus on the almost calibrated case. In particular, we classify Type II blow-ups of almost calibrated Lagrangian mean curvature flow when the blow-down is a pair of transverse planes or, when n=2, a multiplicity two plane. We also show that the Harvey-Lawson Clifford torus cone in C^3 cannot arise as the blow-down of an almost calibra…
We construct closed, embedded, ancient mean curvature flows in each dimension $n\ge 2$ with the topology of $S^1 \times S^{n-1}$. These examples are not mean convex and not solitons. They are constructed by analyzing perturbations of the self-shrinking doughnuts constructed by Drugan and Nguyen (or, alternatively, Angenent's self shrinking torus when $n =2$)
We point out that Ecker's local integral quantity agrees with Huisken's global integral quantity at infinity for ancient mean curvature flows if Huisken's one is finite on each time-slice. In particular, this means that the finiteness of Ecker's integral quantity at infinity implies the finiteness of the entropy at infinity.
For an ancient solution of the mean curvature flow, we show that each time slice M_t is contained in an affine subspace with dimension bounded in terms of the density and the dimension of the evolving submanifold. Recall that an ancient solution is a family M_t that evolves under mean curvature flow for all negative time t.
We study the compact noncollapsed ancient convex solutions to Mean Curvature Flow in $\mathbb{R}^{n+1}$ with $O(1)\times O(n)$ symmetry. We show they all have unique asymptotics as $t\to -\infty$ and we give precise asymptotic description of these solutions. In particular, solutions constructed by White, and Haslhofer and Hershkovits have those asymptotics (in the case of those particular solutions the asymptotics was predicted and formally computed by Angenent).
In this short paper, we show there do not exist three-dimensional noncompact $κ$-solutions of Ricci flow that have positive curvature and satisfy a Type-I bound. This represents progress towards the proof of Perelman's conjecture that the only complete noncompact three-dimensional $κ$-solution with positive curvature is the Bryant soliton.
The main result of this paper is: Given any constant C, there is $(ε,k,L)$ such that if a complete, orientable, noncompact odd-dimensional manifold with bounded positive sectional curvature contains a $(ε,k,L)$-neck, then the asymptotic scalar curvature ratio is bigger or equal to C. As a application we proved that the asymptotic scalar curvature ratio of a complete noncompact ancient Type I-like solution to the Ricci flow with bounded positive sectional curvature on an orientable 3-manifold, is infinity.
