2-dimensional complete self-shrinkers in \(\mathbb R^3\) (Q330005)

The main purpose of this paper is to classify the \(2\)-dimensional complete self-shrinkers in \(\mathbb{R}^3\) with constant squared norm of the second fundamental form. The self-shrinker is a hypersurface \(X:M^n\to \mathbb{R}^{n+1}\) whose mean curvature \(H\) satisfies \[ H+\langle X,N\rangle=0, \] where \(N\) denotes the unit normal vector of the hypersurface. It is well known that the self-shrinkers play an important role in the singularity analysis of the mean curvature flow. Thus, it is an important topic to classify the self-shrinkers under some natural assumptions. In [Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 366, No. 10, 5067--5085 (2014; Zbl 1316.53076)]\textit{Q. Ding} and \textit{Y. L. Xin} classified the \(2\)-dimensional complete self-shrinkers in \(\mathbb{R}^3\) with constant squared norm of the second fundamental form and with polynomial volume growth. They showed that such self-shrinkers must be isometric to one of the following: \(\mathbb{R}^2\), \(\mathbb{S}^1(1)\times \mathbb{R}\) or \(\mathbb{S}^2(\sqrt{2})\). However, there indeed exist examples of self-shrinkers with volume growth faster than polynomial growth. The main theorem of this paper is that Ding-Xin's theorem also holds without the assumption of polynomial volume growth. In order to prove the main theorem, the generalized maximum principle for the \(\mathcal{L}\)-operator \(\mathcal{L}=\Delta-X\cdot\nabla\) on self-shrinkers derived by the first author and \textit{Y. Peng} [Calc. Var. Partial Differ. Equ. 52, No. 3--4, 497--506 (2015; Zbl 1311.53054)] plays a crucial role.