Geometric flows for quadrature identities (Q2255271)

It is well known that the Hele-Shaw flow describes the evolution of a one-parameter family \((\Omega (t))_{t\geq 0}\) of quadrature domains for harmonic functions. Here \(\Omega (0)\) is the initial domain and \(\Omega (t)\) satisfies a quadrature identity relative to the measure \(t\delta _{0}+\chi_{\Omega (0)}\). The present paper describes a geometric flow for a one-parameter family of quadrature surfaces \(\partial \Omega (t)\) in \(\mathbb{R}^{N}\). In this case each \(\partial \Omega (t)\) satisfies a quadrature identity, for harmonic functions \(h\), of the form \(\int_{\partial\Omega (0)}hdH^{N-1}+t\int hd\mu =\int_{\partial \Omega (t)}hdH^{N-1}\), where \(\mu \) is a positive measure with compact support in \(\Omega (0)\). It is shown that the flow is uniquely solvable provided \(\partial \Omega (0)\) has positive mean curvature. The author actually considers a generalized flow, which includes both the above geometric flow and also the Hele-Shaw flow as special cases.