Solutions for the Stefan problem with Gibbs-Thomson law by a local minimisation (Q1430455)

The main concern of the paper is to provide a suitable formulation of the Stefan problem with Gibbs-Thomson law in which the singularities of the interface generated by the merging of phases of the same kind can be treated in an appropriate way. The novelty consists in replacing the mean curvature \(H\) of the phase interface by the generalized mean curvature vector \(\vec{H}\), reformulating the Gibbs-Thomson law not simply as \(H=u\) (where \(u\) is the rescaled temperature) but as \(\vec{H}=u \vec{\nu}\), with \(\vec{\nu}=\nabla \chi / | \nabla \chi| \) (where \(\chi\) is the phase parameter), to be read in a suitable sense. Time discretisation and local minimisation are used to construct the solution. Of course the paper is very technical. As an example the impingement of two growing ice balls is illustrated, showing that bridge-like structures can be created.