Existence and uniqueness of standard bubble clusters of given volumes in \(\mathbb R^n\) (Q700482)

This article is about standard bubbles, defined as follows: a standard \((n+1)\)-bubble in Euclidean \(n\)-space \(\mathbb R^n\) is a subset of \(\mathbb R^n\) that is homeomorphic to the barycentric subdivision of an \(n\)-simplex, and each face is either a sphere or a hyperplane, and faces meet at 120 degree angles; a standard \(k\)-bubble in \(\mathbb R^n\), \(k < n+1,\) is defined recursively as the result of removing one outer face from a \((k+1)\)-bubble and keeping all the same conditions on the faces and incidence angles. (Outer faces are those which separate a compact region from the noncompact one.) The author proves that for any given volumes \(V_1,\dots,V_k > 0\), the \(k\)-bubble with these volumes is unique, up to rigid motions of \(\mathbb R^n\). (Existence of this \(k\)-bubble was already shown by Brakke, and the author includes Brakke's proof of existence in this article.) The author proves this uniqueness result in two steps. Step 1: it is shown that for any \(r_1,\dots,r_k > 0\), there exists a unique \(k\)-bubble whose outer faces have radii \(r_j\) respectively. Step 2: Let \(V\) from \((\mathbb R^+)^k\) to \((\mathbb R^+)^k\) be the map from \((r_1,\dots,r_k)\) to the volumes \((V_1,\dots,V_k)\) of the respective regions of the \(k\)-bubble with outer radii \(r_j,\) then it is shown that \(V\) is injective.