Uniformly compressing mean curvature flow (Q2332267)

The mean curvature flow (MCF) of \(k\)-dimensional submanifolds \(M_t\subset \mathbb{R}^d\), \(1\le k<d\), is given by \(\frac{dx}{dt} =\vec{H}(x)\), where \(x\) is any point of \(M_t\) and \(\vec{H}(x)\) is the mean curvature vector of \(M_t\) at \(x\). This and many related flows have been studied intensively in the past four decades. The authors introduce a modified flow that has some advantages over the classical MCF. Given a compact \(k\)-dimensional manifold \(M\), the space of embeddings (or immersions) of \(M\) into \(\mathbb{R}^d\) can be equipped with a Riemannian structure, relative to which the MCF is the \(L^2\) gradient flow \(\partial_t M_t = - \text{grad}\, \text {vol}(M_t)\) of the volume functional \(\text{vol}\simeq\mathcal{H}^k\), where \(\mathcal{H}^k\) is the \(k\)-dimensional Hausdorff measure. A difficulty with this Riemannian structure is that it is degenerate in the sense that any two embeddings of \(M\) can be connected by a path of arbitrarily small length, see [\textit{P. W. Michor} and \textit{D. Mumford} [Doc. Math. 10, 217--245 (2005; Zbl 1083.58010)]. A second issue is that \(\mathcal{H}^k\) is not uniformly contracted by the MCF, except in some very special situations. Consequently, the flow destroys the uniform density of gridpoints on \(M_t\), which causes computational difficulties. In the case of curves in the plane, the second issue can be overcome by considering a tangentially corrected MCF which is geometrically equivalent to the MCF, see [\textit{U. Abresch} and \textit{J. Langer}, J. Differ. Geom. 23, 175--196 (1986; Zbl 0592.53002); \textit{P. W. Michor} and \textit{D. Mumford}, J. Eur. Math. Soc. (JEMS) 8, No. 1, 1--48 (2006; Zbl 1101.58005)]. Here the authors suggest a different approach that eliminates both of these difficulties, and which is applicable for any dimensions \(k\) and \(d\). Their idea is to consider a new flow, the uniformly compressing mean curvature flow (UCMCF), which is the closest possible to the original MCF in a certain least squares sense among flows that uniformly contract \(\mathcal{H}^k\). Unlike the tangentially corrected MCF, this new flow differs from the classical MCF in the normal direction, and thus the geometrical evolutions of submanifolds by these flows are different. However, the qualitative behaviour of the UCMCF is very similar to the usual MCF, and thus it may be used as a substitute in some applications. The authors consider a suitably renormalized UCMCF which allows them to analyze more easily the asymptotic shape of solutions. They deal mainly with immersed loops (\(k=1\)) and discuss the general case \(1\le k<d\) in the appendix. They show the local strong well-posedness of the problem, characterize the steady states, and prove global existence for initial data close to simple circles, as well as the exponential convergence of such solutions. The global existence of solutions for general Lipschitz initial curves is also addressed.