Highly degenerate harmonic mean curvature flow (Q1016548)

The authors studied the evolution of a weakly convex smooth surface \(\Sigma_0\) in \(\mathbb R^3\) with flat sides by the harmonic mean curvature flow. Let \(C\) be the set of surfaces \(\Sigma_0= \Sigma_1\cup\Sigma_2\), satisfying the following assumptions: \(\Sigma_1\) lies in the plane \(z= 0\), and \(\Sigma_2\) is a strictly convex smooth surface contained in the upper half space \(z> 0\). The lower part of \(\Sigma_2\) can be written as a graph of a function \(z= h(x, y)\) over a compact domain \(\Omega\subset\mathbb R^2\) containing \(\Sigma_1\). Let \(\gamma=\partial\Sigma_1\). It is assumed that the function \(g= h^p\) satisfies the following non-degeneracy condition: \[ |Dg(P)|\geq \lambda,\quad g_{\tau\tau}(P)\geq\lambda\;\forall p\in\Gamma \] for some constant \(\lambda> 0\), where \(\tau\) denotes the tangential direction to the level sets of \(g\). They proved: {\parindent=6mm \begin{itemize}\item[(1)] The short time existence as well as the optimal regularity of the HMCF with initial data in \(C\) \item[(2)] The flow remains in the class \(C\). \item[(3)] \(\Gamma\) evolves by the curve shortening flow. \end{itemize}} Previously, \textit{B. Andrews} [Pac. J. Math. 195, No.~1, 1--34 (2000; Zbl 1028.53072)] studied the existence of the solutions of HMCF with strictly convex, smooth initial data. It was extended to weakly convex smooth surfaces by \textit{S. Dieter} [Calc. Var. Partial Differ. Equ. 22, No.~2, 229--251 (2005; Zbl 1076.53079)], in which the mean curvature \(H> 0\) was assumed. The novelty of this paper is that both \(K\) and \(H\) can vanish in a region.