A general pinching principle for mean curvature flow and applications (Q2406071)

The author proves a sharp pinching estimate for the immersed mean convex solutions of the mean curvature flow that unifies and improves previously known pinching estimates including the umbilic estimates of \textit{G. Huisken} [J. Differ. Geom. 20, 237--266 (1984; Zbl 0556.53001)], the convexity estimates and the cylindrical estimate of Huisken-Sinestrari. The author proves that the curvature of the solution pinches onto the convex cone generated by the curvatures of any shrinking cylinder solutions admitted by the initial data. As a consequence, this yields a sharp estimate for the largest principal curvature which is used by the author to obtain a new proof of a sharp estimate for the inscribed curvature for embedded solutions. A series of sharp estimates for ancient solutions are obtained. In particular, the author proves a convexity estimate for ancient solutions that strengthen recent characterizations of the shrinking sphere by Huisken-Sinestrari and \textit{R. Haslhofer} and \textit{O. Hershkovits} [Commun. Anal. Geom. 24, No. 3, 593--604 (2016; Zbl 1345.53068)].