Ancient asymptotically cylindrical flows and applications (Q2144529)

In this extensive study, the authors prove the mean-convex neighborhood conjecture for neck singularities of the mean curvature flow in \(\mathbb{R}^{n+1}\) for all \(n \geq 3\). Precisely as in the case \(n = 2\), which was solved by the first three authors, the existence of such a mean-convex neighborhood follows from classifying a certain class of ancient Brakke flows that arise as potential blowup limits near a neck singularity. More specifically, the authors demonstrate that any ancient unit-regular integral Brakke flow with a cylindrical blowdown must be either a round shrinking cylinder, a translating bowl soliton, or an ancient oval. This result, combined with a prior result of the last two authors [Commun. Pure Appl. Math. 73, No. 3, 558--580 (2020; Zbl 1441.53077)], implies uniqueness of mean curvature flow through neck singularities. The main difficulty of the proof in the higher-dimensional case lies in extending the spectral analysis on the cylinder to global geometric properties of the solution. Most importantly, due to the wide variety of possible self-shrinking flows with entropy lower than the cylinder when \(n \geq 3\), smoothness can not be proved using the classical moving plane method to obtain symmetry. To overcome this problem, the authors introduce a novel variant of the moving plane method, which they call the ``moving plane method without assuming smoothness'', in which smoothness and symmetry are established in tandem.