Anisotropic flows for convex plane curves (Q1974915)

The authors study anisotropic flows for closed convex curves in \(\mathbb{R}^2\) of the form \(\beta(\theta)V=g(\theta)k+F\), where \(\theta\) denotes the tangent angle of the curve, \(V\) the velocity and \(\beta>0\) is a kinetic coefficient, the interfacial energy \(g\) is of the form \(g=d^2f/d\theta^2+f, f>0\), and the constant \(F\) is the energy of the solid relative to its surrounding. Their main theorem then states that for positive, smooth functions \(\beta, g\) and a smooth, convex initial closed curve \(\gamma_0\) there exists a negative constant \(F^\star\) such that the solution for the anisotropic flow exists on a maximal time interval \((0, t_{max})\) and is uniformly convex. Moreover, if \(F>F^\star\), then \(t_{max}\) is finite and the curves shrink to a point such that the rescaled curves (rescaled such that the enclosed area is fixed) subconverge to selfsimilar solutions of the corresponding flow. When \(F=F^\star\) and \(g=d^2f/d\theta^2+f\) for some \(f\), then \(t_{max}=\infty\) and the flow converges smoothly to a stationary solution of \(g(\theta)k+F=0\). In the case \(F<F^\star\) one also obtains \(t_{max}=\infty\) and, in addition, the interface expands to infinity as \(t\) approaches infinity. If, in addition to \(F<F^\star\), it is assumed that \(\beta^{-1}+d^2 \beta^{-1}/d\theta^2>0\), for all \(\theta\), then \(\gamma(\cdot, t)/t\) converges smoothly to the boundary of the Wulff region of \(-F/\beta\).