Foliations of a smooth metric measure space by hypersurfaces with constant \(f\)-mean curvature (Q471296)

The paper is devoted to smooth codimension-one foliations \({\mathcal F}\) with constant \(f\)-mean curvature of a Riemannian manifold \((M^{n+1},\bar g)\) with a density \(e^{-f}\) used to weight the volume of domains and the area of hypersurfaces. The \(f\)-mean curvature is defined by \(H_f=H+\bar g(\bar\nabla f, \nu)\), where \(\nu\) is a unit normal to the leaves of \({\mathcal F}\). Firstly, it is shown that all leaves of \({\mathcal F}\) are \(f\)-minimal hypersurfaces when either \(M^{n+1}\) is compact and has nonnegative Bakry-Émery Ricci curvature (defined by \(\overline{\text{Ric}}_f=\overline{\text{Ric}}+\bar\nabla^2 f\)), or the limit of the ratio of the weighted volume of a geodesic ball \(B\) and the weighted area of a geodesic sphere \(\partial B\) vanishes. Secondly, it is proven that every leaf of \({\mathcal F}\) is strongly \(f\)-stable, i.e., \(\int_\Sigma u L_f\,u\,dA_m\leq0\), where the stability operator is defined by \(L_f=\Delta_f+|A|^2+\overline{\text{Ric}}_f(\nu,\nu)\) and \(A\) is the second fundamental form of the leaves. Lastly, it is shown that there is no complete proper foliation of the Gaussian space, i.e., Euclidean space \(\mathbb R^{n+1}\) with the density \(f=|X|^2/2\), whose leaves have the same constant \(f\)-mean curvature. In~particular, there are no foliations of \(\mathbb R^{n+1}\), whose leaves are complete proper self-similar solutions for mean curvature flow.