The round sphere minimizes entropy among closed self-shrinkers (Q366948): Difference between revisions

The Gaussian entropy of an hypersurface \(\Sigma\) of \(\mathbb R^{n+1}\) is given by the supremum over all Gaussian surface areas, \[ \lambda(\Sigma)=\sup_{t_0>0, x_0\in\mathbb R^{n+1}} (4\pi t_0)^{-\frac{n}{2}}\int_{\Sigma}e^{-\frac{|x-x_0|^2}{4t_0}}, \] and it is monotone nonincreasing under the mean curvature flow (MCF). Self-shrinking hypersurfaces are those whose mean curvature satisfies the equation \(H(x)={\langle x,{n}\rangle}/{2}\), where \({n}\) is the outward unit normal, and in this case \(\lambda(\Sigma)\) as a supremum is assumed at the Gaussian area with \(x_0=0\) and \(t_0=1\). Such hypersurfaces can be seen as the timeslice for \(t=-1\) of the mean curvature flow moving by rescalings, and they are just critical points of the Gaussian area. \textit{K. A. Brakke} proved in [The motion of a surface by its mean curvature. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press (1978; Zbl 0386.53047)] that \(\mathbb R^n\) has the least entropy of any self-shrinker. The main result of the paper is to show that spheres have the least entropy among all closed self-shrinkers but there is a gap to the second lowest. The closeness assumption is necessary, because entropy is invariant under products with a copy of \(\mathbb R\). Since \(\Sigma\) is closed, the MCF becomes singular and the corresponding self-shrinker has lower entropy. The authors prove that there exist \(\epsilon>0\) depending on \(n\) only, such that \(\lambda(\Sigma)\geq \lambda({S}^n) +\epsilon\), for any closed self-shrinker \(\Sigma\) not the round sphere. Recalling that \(\lambda({S}^n)\) is decreasing on \(n\), they also show that if \(\lambda(\Sigma)\leq \lambda({S}^{n-1})\) for \(n\geq 3\) or \(\lambda(\Sigma)\leq \frac{3}{2}\) for \(n=2\), then \(\Sigma\) is diffeomorphic to \({S}^n\). The proof is based on several results of previous work of the first and third author. Given a closed self-shrinker \(\Sigma\), a classification for stable self-shrinkers obtained by them in [Ann. Math. (2) 175, No. 2, 755--833 (2012; Zbl 1239.53084)] provides a perturbation \(\Gamma\) of \(\Sigma\) inside itself with lower entropy and with mean curvature \(H> (1/2)\langle x,{n}\rangle\). Then, taking a rescaled MCF and corresponding curvature bounds, they show that there is a finite blow up time, and a classification of singularities for low entropy is established. Assuming that the gap does not exist, a sequence of closed self-shrinkers \(\Sigma_i\neq {S}^n\) is taken, and a suitable perturbation \(\tilde{M}_{i,t}\) will converge smoothly to some \(M_t\) whose Gaussian area converges to \(\lambda({S}^n)\) when \(t\to +\infty\), what implies that every \(M_t\) must be a round sphere leading to a contradiction. The authors also conjecture that the result is true with \(\epsilon=0\), for any closed hypersurface \(M^n\) with \(n\leq 6\), and it is also true for any non-flat self-shrinker \(\Sigma^n\subset\mathbb R^{n+1}\), with \(n\leq 6\). These are known to be true for \(n=1\).