Evolution by mean curvature flow in sub-Riemannian geometries: a stochastic approach (Q972023)

Let \(\mathfrak{F}\) be a k-dimensional smooth distribution, called horizontal, on an \(n\)-dimensional manifold M such that \(\mathfrak{F}\) and its iterated brackets generate the entire tangent bundle TM. A Riemannian inner product defined smoothly on each horizontal subspace \(\mathfrak{F}(m) \subset T_{m}M\) determines a sub-Riemannian metric \(d_{\mathfrak{F}}\) on N, where \(d_{\mathfrak{F}}(x,y)\) is the infimum of the lengths of curves from x to y that are tangent almost everywhere to \(\mathfrak{F}\). In the current article \(\mathfrak{F}\) is a distribution in the Euclidean space \(\mathbb{R}^{n}\) with the standard inner product restricted to \(\mathfrak{F}\). The authors consider the evolution of a hypersurface S in \(\mathbb{R}^{n}\) by the horizontal mean curvature of S. However, this evolution is not defined at points m where the Euclidean normal is orthogonal to \(\mathfrak{F}(m)\). To get around this difficulty the authors consider a PDE related to the standard hypersurface evolution, and they evolve the hypersurface S by a viscosity solution of this PDE. Using methods of Chen, Giga and Goto they prove the existence of a viscosity solution, but the uniqueness remains open.