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.
If a normalized Kähler-Ricci flow $g(t),t\in[0,\infty),$ on a compact Kähler $n$-manifold, $n\geq 3$, of positive first Chern class satisfies $g(t)\in 2πc_{1}(M)$ and has $L^{n}$ curvature operator uniformly bounded, then the curvature operator will also uniformly bounded along the flow. Consequently the flow will converge along a subsequence to a Kähler-Ricci soliton.
We show that the scalar curvature is uniformly bounded for the normalized Kahler-Ricci flow on a Kahler manifold with semi-ample canonical bundle. In particular, the normalized Kahler-Ricci flow has long time existence if and only if the scalar curvature is uniformly bounded, for Kahler surfaces, projective manifolds of complex dimension three, and for projective manifolds of all dimensions if assuming the abundance conjecture.
On compact Riemannian manifolds with a large isometry group we investigate the invariant spectrum of the ordinary Laplacian. For either a toric Kaehler metric, or a rotationally-symmetric metric on the sphere, we produce upper bounds for all eigenvalues of the invariant spectrum assuming non-negative scalar curvature.
It is shown that the variational derivative of the integral of Branson's Q-curvature is the ambient obstruction tensor of Fefferman-Graham. A classification of irreducible conformally invariant tensors modulo quadratic and higher degree terms in curvature is established.
We show some computations related to the motion by mean curvature flow of a submanifold inside an ambient Riemannian manifold evolving by Ricci or backward Ricci flow. Special emphasis is given to the possible generalization of Huisken's monotonicity formula and its connection with the validity of some Li--Yau--Hamilton differential Harnack--type inequalities in a moving Riemannian manifold.
We establish fundamental results for a parabolic flow of Riemannian metrics introduced by Bahuaud-Helliwell in arXiv:1010:4287v1 which is based on the Fefferman-Graham ambient obstruction tensor. First, we obtain local $L^2$ smoothing estimates for the curvature tensor and use them to prove pointwise smoothing estimates for the curvature tensor. We use the pointwise smoothing estimates to show that the curvature must blow up for a finite time singular solution. We also use the pointwise smoothing estimates to prove a compactness theorem for a sequence of solutions with bounded $C^0$ curvature …
We give a geometric derivation of Branson's Q-curvature in terms of the ambient metric associated with conformal structures; it naturally follows from the ambient metric construction of conformally invariant operators and can be applied to a large class of invariant operators. This procedure can be also applied to CR geometry and gives a CR analog of the Q-curvature; it then turns out that the Q-curvature gives the coefficient of the logarithmic singularity of the Szego kernel of 3-dimensional CR manifolds.
We obtain existence of double bubbles of large and constant mean curvatures in Riemannian manifolds. These arise as perturbations of geodesic standard double bubbles centered at critical points of the ambient scalar curvature and aligned along eigen-vectors of the ambient Ricci tensor. We also obtain general multiplicity results via Lusternik-Schnirelman theory, and extra ones in case of double bubbles whose opposite boundaries have the same mean curvature.
The long-time existence and umbilicity estimates for compact, graphical solutions to expanding curvature flows are deduced in Riemannian warped products of a real interval with a compact fibre. Notably we do not assume the ambient manifold to be rotationally symmetric, nor the radial curvature to converge, nor a lower bound on the ambient sectional curvature. The inverse speeds are given by powers $p\leq 1$ of a curvature function satisfying few common properties.
We consider, in a first instance, the class of boundaries of sets with locally finite perimeter whose (weakly defined) mean curvature is $g ν$, for a given continuous positive ambient function $g$, and where $ν$ denotes the inner normal. It is well-known that taking limits in the sense of varifolds within this class is not possible in general, due to the appearence of "hidden boundaries", that is, portions (of positive measure with even multiplicity) on which the (weakly defined) mean curvature vanishes, so that $g$ does not prescribe the mean curvature in the limit. As a special instance of a…
We prove two new estimates for the level set flow of mean convex domains in Riemannian manifolds. Our estimates give control - exponential in time - for the infimum of the mean curvature, and the ratio between the norm of the second fundamental form and the mean curvature. In particular, the estimates remove a stumbling block that has been left after the work of White and Haslhofer-Kleiner, and thus allow us to extend the structure theory for mean convex level set flow to general ambient manifolds of arbitrary dimension.
In this paper we provide an extension to the Jellett-Minkowski's formula for immersed submanifolds into ambient manifolds which possesses a pole and radial curvatures bounded from above or below by the radial sectional curvatures of a rotationally symmetric model space. Using this Jellett-Minkowski's generalized formula we can focus on several isoperimetric problems. More precisely, on lower bounds for isoperimetric quotients of any precompact domain with smooth boundary, or on the isoperimetric profile of the submanifold and its modified volume. In the particular case of a model space with st…
In the article, we generalize some recent results of Colding and Minicozzi on generic singularities of mean curvature flow to curved ambient spaces. To do so, we make use of a weighted monotonicity formula to derive an "almost monotonicity" for the entropy upon embedding into $\R^\ell$. We are also lead to study the continuity of the entropy functional in certain cases.
We prove differential Harnack inequalities for flows of strictly convex hypersurfaces by powers $p$, $0<p<1$, of the mean curvature in Einstein manifolds with a positive lower bound on the sectional curvature. We assume that this lower bound is sufficiently large compared to the derivatives of the curvature tensor of the ambient space and that the mean curvature of the initial hypersurface is sufficiently large compared to the ambient geometry. We also obtain some new Harnack inequalities for more general curvature flows in the sphere, as well as a monotonicity estimate for the mean curvature …
We consider the inverse mean curvature flow in smooth Riemannian manifolds of the form $([R_{0},\infty)\times S^n,\bar{g})$ with metric $\bar{g}=dr^2+{\vartheta}^2(r)σ$ and non-positive radial sectional curvature. We prove, that for initial mean-convex graphs over $S^n$ the flow exists for all times and remains a graph over $S^{n}$. Under weak further assumptions on the ambient manifold, we prove optimal decay of the gradient and that the flow leaves become umbilic exponentially fast. We prove optimal $C^2$ estimates in case that the ambient pinching improves.
Mean curvature flow evolves isometrically immersed base manifolds $M$ in the direction of their mean curvatures in an ambient manifold $\bar{M}$. If the base manifold $M$ is compact, the short time existence and uniqueness of the mean curvature flow are well-known. For complete isometrically immersed submanifolds of arbitrary codimensions, the existence and uniqueness are still unsettled even in the Euclidean space. In this paper, we solve the uniqueness problem affirmatively for the mean curvature flow of general codimensions and general ambient manifolds. In the second part of the paper, ins…
We show that mean curvature flow of a compact submanifold in a complete Riemannian manifold cannot form singularity at time infinity if the ambient Riemannian manifold has bounded geometry and satisfies certain curvature and volume growth conditions .
We use Colding--Minicozzi lamination theory to study the systole of large genus minimal surfaces in an ambient three-manifold of positive Ricci curvature.
In this paper we consider surfaces which are critical points of the Willmore functional subject to constrained area. In the case of small area we calculate the corrections to the intrinsic geometry induced by the ambient curvature. These estimates together with the choice of an adapted geometric center of mass lead to refined position estimates in relation to the scalar curvature of the ambient manifold.
In this paper we prove that stable, compact without boundary, oriented, nonzero constant mean curvature surfaces in the de Sitter-Schwarzschild and Reissner-Nordstrom manifolds are the slices, provided its mean curvature satisfies some positive lower bound. More generally, we prove that stable, compact without boundary, oriented nonzero constant mean curvature surfaces in a large class of three dimensional warped product manifolds are embedded topological spheres, provided the mean curvature satisfies a positive lower bound depending only on the ambient curvatures. We conclude the paper provin…
We prove that on a compact Riemannian manifold of dimension $3$ or higher, with positive Ricci curvature, the Allen--Cahn min-max scheme (implemented by the first author and N. Wickramasekera in 2020), with prescribing function taken to be a non-zero constant $λ$, produces an embedded hypersurface of constant mean curvature $λ$ ($λ$-CMC). More precisely, we prove that the interface arising from said min-max contains no even-multiplicity minimal hypersurface and no quasi-embedded points (both of these occurrences are in principle possible in the conclusions of the aforementioned work by the fir…
Given a complete hypersurface isometrically immersed in an ambient manifold, in this paper we provide a lower bound for the norm of the mean curvature vector field of the immersion assuming that: 1) The ambient manifold admits a Killing submersion with unit-length Killing vector field. 2)The projection of the image of the immersion is bounded in the base manifold. 3)The hypersurface is stochastically complete, or the immersion is proper.
We show that the evolution of isoparametric hypersurfaces of Riemannian manifolds by the mean curvature flow is given by a reparametrization of the parallel family in short time, as long as the uniqueness of the mean curvature flow holds for the initial data and the corresponding ambient space. As an application, we provide a class of Riemannian manifolds that admit hypersurfaces with constant principal curvatures, which are not isoparametric hypersurfaces. Furthermore, for a class of ambient spaces, we show that the singularities developed by the mean curvature flow with isoparametric hypersu…
We construct examples of compact and one-ended constant mean curvature surfaces with large mean curvature in Riemannian manifolds with axial symmetry by gluing together small spheres positioned end-to-end along a geodesic. Such surfaces cannot exist in Euclidean space, but we show that the gradient of the ambient scalar curvature acts as a `friction term' which permits the usual analytic gluing construction to be carried out.
We prove that two spheres of the same constant mean curvature in an arbitrary homogeneous three-manifold only differ by an ambient isometry, and we determine the values of the mean curvature for which such spheres exist. This gives a complete classification of immersed constant mean curvature spheres in three-dimensional homogeneous manifolds.
The purpose of this article is to determine explicitly the complete surfaces with parallel mean curvature vector, both in the complex projective plane and the complex hyperbolic plane. The main results are as follows: When the curvature of the ambient space is positive, there exists a unique such surface up to rigid motions of the target space. On the other hand, when the curvature of the ambient space is negative, there are `non-trivial' complete parallel mean curvature surfaces generated by Jacobi elliptic functions and they exhaust such surfaces.
Inspired by the idea of Colding-Minicozzi in [CM1], we define (mean curvature flow) entropy for submanifolds in a general ambient Riemannian manifold. In particular, this entropy is equivalent to area growth of a closed submanifold in a closed ambient manifold with non-negative Ricci curvature. Moreover, this entropy is monotone along the mean curvature flow in a closed Riemannian manifold with non-negative sectional curvatures and parallel Ricci curvature. As an application, we show the partial regularity of the limit of mean curvature flow of surfaces in a three dimensional Riemannian manifo…
We investigate the mean curvature flows in a class of warped product manifolds with closed hypersurfaces fibering over $\mathbb{R}$. In particular, we prove that under natural conditions on the warping function and Ricci curvature bound for the ambient space, there exists a large class of closed initial hypersurfaces, as geodesic graphs over the totally geodesic hypersurface $Σ$, such that the mean curvature flow starting from $S_0$ exists for all time and converges to $Σ$.
We show that closed subsets with vanishing first homology in two-dimensional spaces inherit the upper curvature bound from their ambient spaces and discuss topological applications.
It is well-known that for a surface in a 3-dimensional real space form the constancy of the mean curvature is equivalent to the harmonicity of the Gauss map. However, this is not true in general for surfaces in an arbitrary 3-dimensional ambient space. In this paper we study this problem for surfaces in an important and very natural family of 3-dimensional ambient spaces, namely homogeneous spaces. In particular, we obtain a full classification of constant mean curvature surfaces, whose Gauss map satisfies the more mild condition of vertical harmonicity, in all 3-dimensional homogeneous spaces…
We show that under certain curvature conditions of the ambient space an entire Killing graph of constant mean curvature lying inside a slab must be a totally geodesic slice.
The mean curvature flow is an evolution process under which a submanifold deforms in the direction of its mean curvature vector. The hypersurface case has been much studied since the eighties. Recently, several theorems on regularity, global existence and convergence of the flow in various ambient spaces and codimensions were proved. We shall explain the results obtained as well as the techniques involved. The potential applications in symplectic topology and mirror symmetry will also be discussed.
The theory of ambient spaces is useful to define CR invariant objects, such as CR invariant powers of the sub-Laplacian, the $P$-prime operators, and $Q$-prime curvature. However in general, it is difficult to write down these objects in terms of the Tanaka-Webster connection. In this paper, we give those explicit formulas for CR manifolds satisfying an Einstein condition, called Sasakian $η$-Einstein manifolds. As an application, we study properties of the first and the second variation of the total $Q$-prime curvature at Sasakian $η$-Einstein manifolds.
We study deformations of free boundary constant mean curvature (CMC) hypersurfaces whose Jacobi operator is degenerate due to symmetries of the ambient space. The value of the mean curvature and the ambient metric are allowed to vary simultaneously, provided that the infinitesimal ambient symmetries change smoothly. We discuss applications to free boundary CMC disks and Delaunay annuli in the unit ball of a space form.
We obtain sharp estimates involving the mean curvatures of higher order of a complete bounded hypersurface immersed in a complete Riemannian manifold. Similar results are also given for complete spacelike hypersurfaces in Lorentzian ambient spaces.
We describe an elementary algorithm for expressing, as explicit formulae in tractor calculus, the conformally invariant GJMS operators due to C.R. Graham et alia. These differential operators have leading part a power of the Laplacian. Conformal tractor calculus is the natural induced bundle calculus associated to the conformal Cartan connection. Applications discussed include standard formulae for these operators in terms of the Levi-Civita connection and its curvature and a direct definition and formula for T. Branson's so-called Q-curvature (which integrates to a global conformal invariant)…
We extend the estimate obtained in [1] for the mean curvature of a cylindrically bounded proper submanifold in a product manifold with an Euclidean space as one factor to a general product ambient space endowed with a warped product structure.
We study the uniqueness of minimal submanifolds and the stability of the mean curvature flow in several well-known model spaces of manifolds of special holonomy. These include the Stenzel metric on the cotangent bundle of spheres, the Calabi metric on the cotangent bundle of complex projective spaces, and the Bryant--Salamon metrics on vector bundles over certain Einstein manifolds. In particular, we show that the zero sections, as calibrated submanifolds with respect to their respective ambient metrics, are unique among compact minimal submanifolds and are dynamically stable under the mean cu…
In a previous paper we developed a regularity and compactness theory in Euclidean ambient spaces for codimension 1 weakly stable CMC integral varifolds satisfying two (necessary) structural conditions. Here we generalize this theory to the setting where the mean curvature (of the regular part of the varifold) is prescribed by a given $C^{1, α}$ ambient function $g$ and the ambient space is a general $(n+1)$-dimensional Riemannian manifold; we give general conditions that imply that the support of the varifold, away from a possible singular set of dimension $\leq n-7,$ is the image of a $C^{2}$…
We show that the properties of Lagrangian mean curvature flow are a special case of a more general phenomenon, concerning couplings between geometric flows of the ambient space and of totally real submanifolds. Both flows are driven by ambient Ricci curvature or, in the non-Kähler case, by its analogues. To this end we explore the geometry of totally real submanifolds, defining (i) a new geometric flow in terms of the ambient canonical bundle, (ii) a modified volume functional which takes into account the totally real condition. We discuss short-time existence for our flow and show it couples …
We obtain necessary conditions for the existence of complete vertical graphs of constant mean curvature in the Hyperbolic and Steady State spaces. In the two-dimensional case we prove Bernstein-type results in each of these ambient spaces.
This paper explains the construction of all hypersurfaces with constant mean curvature -- cmc -- and exactly two principal curvatures on any space form endowed with a semi-riemannian metric. Here we will consider riemannian hypersurfaces as well as hypersurfaces with semi-riemannian metrics induced by the ambient space. We show explicit immersions for all these hypersurfaces. We will see that for any given ambient space, the family of cmc hypersurfaces with two principal curvatures depends on two parameters, $H$ and $C$. We describe the range for all possible $(H,C)$ associated with complete c…
This survey describes some recent rigidity results obtained by the authors for the prescribed mean curvature problem on graphs $u : M \rightarrow \mathbb{R}$. Emphasis is put on minimal, CMC and capillary graphs, as well as on graphical solitons for the mean curvature flow, in warped product ambient spaces. A detailed analysis of the mean curvature operator is given, focusing on maximum principles at infinity, Liouville properties, gradient estimates. Among the geometric applications, we mention the Bernstein theorem for positive entire minimal graphs on manifolds with non-negative Ricci curva…
We examine homogeneous solitons of the ambient obstruction flow and, in particular, prove that any compact ambient obstruction soliton with constant scalar curvature is trivial. Focusing on dimension 4, we show that any homogeneous gradient Bach soliton that is steady must be Bach flat, and that the only non-Bach-flat shrinking gradient solitons are product metrics on $\mathbb{R}^2\times S^2$ and $\mathbb{R}^2 \times H^2$. We also construct a non-Bach-flat expanding homogeneous gradient Bach soliton. We also establish a number of results for solitons to the geometric flow by a general tensor $…
We give a complete classification of the immersed constant mean curvature spheres in a three-sphere with an arbitrary homogenous metric, by proving that for each $H\in\mathbb{R}$, there exists a constant mean curvature $H$-sphere in the space that is unique up to an ambient isometry.
In this article we study complex properties of minimal Lagrangian submanifolds in Kaehler ambient spaces, and how they depend on the ambient curvature. In particular, we prove that, in the negative curvature case, minimal Lagrangians do not admit fillings by holomorphic discs. The proof relies on a mix of holomorphic curve techniques and on certain convexity results.