Evolution equations in geometry.
Partial differential equations have been used for a long time to model the evolution of physical systems in time. Often the partial differential equations link physical phenomena to geometrical models. Many nonlinear, usually parabolic partial differential equations and systems have been successfully used to construct natural deformations of curves, hypersurfaces, or Riemannian metrics on manifolds. In this paper, the author concentrates on four such deformations. The first deformation is to decrease the area of a hypersurface as fast as possible. It leads to the evolution of hypersurfaces by their mean curvature. If \(F\) is a smooth family of immersions of \(n\)-dimensional hypersurfaces into a smooth Riemannian manifold, then the hypersurfaces move by mean curvature flow if they satisfy the evolution equation \(\frac{\partial F}{\partial t}(p,t)=-H\,n(p,t)\), where \(n(p,t)\) is unit normal at \(F(p,t)\) and \(H(p,t)\) is the mean curvature. Several results are presented to highlight the smoothing, local regularity behavior, the existence, and asymptotic of longtime solutions. The second deformation is that one of Riemannian metrics in direction of their Ricci curvature. A one-parameter family \(g(p,t)\) of Riemannian metrics on a compact manifold without boundary evolves by its Ricci curvature if \(\frac{\partial }{\partial t}g_{ij}(p,t)=-2R_{ij}(p,t)\). Similar to mean curvature flow, this equation is a quasilinear parabolic system which admits at least shorttime solutions for sufficiently smooth initial data. \textit{R. S.~Hamilton} [J. Differ. Geom. 17, 255--306 (1982; Zbl 0504.53034)] showed that a Riemannian metric of positive Ricci curvature on a 3-manifold can be smoothly deformed to a constant curvature metric. While the above deformations involve second order parabolic differential equations, the optimalization of curvature integrals for geometric objects such as hypersurfaces or Riemannian manifolds naturally leads to fourth order parabolic equations for these objects. This is the third deformation discussed by the author. Finally, a few natural geometric evolution equations of hyperbolic type are briefly discussed. For the entire collection see [Zbl 0955.00011].
- Evolution equations in Riemannian geometry
- Curvature problems
- Evolution of curvature tensors under mean curvature flow
- scientific article; zbMATH DE number 898432 (Why is no real title available?)
- Geometric evolution equations for hypersurfaces
- Basic evolution PDEs in Riemannian geometry
- Heat diffusion in geometry
- Evolution equations for shapes and geometries
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