Lemniscates do not survive Laplace growth (Q2275698)

The Polubarinova-Galin equation models the movement of the boundary between two fluids in the plane when a sink or source is present. (For background material see [\textit{B. Gustafsson} and \textit{A. Vasil'ev}, Conformal and potential analysis in Hele-Shaw cells. Advances in Mathematical Fluid Mechanics. Basel: Birkhäuser (2006; Zbl 1122.76002)].) In the present paper it is shown that the only polynomial lemniscates moving under this process of Laplacian growth (in fact, under a somewhat larger class of processes which are invariant under time reversal) are concentric circles.