Lecture notes on mean curvature flow (Q537677)

This book gives an introduction to the topic of mean curvature flows of hypersurfaces in Euclidean spaces. Such a flow is given by the evolution equation \[ u_t=H_u\cdot n_u, \] where \(u:M\times{\mathbb R}\to{\mathbb R}^{n+1}\) is a family of immersions of a smooth \(n\)-dimensional manifold, \(H_u\) is the mean curvature of the immersion \(u(\cdot,t)\) and \(n_u\) is the unit normal field along it. Denoting the induced metric on \(M\) at time \(t\) by \(g(t)\), this evolution equation takes the form of the quasi-linear geometric heat equation \[ u_t=\Delta_{g(t)}u, \] where \(\Delta_{g(t)}\) is the Laplace-Beltrami operator on \(M\) associated to \(g(t)\). This feature allows the author to prove that the mean curvature evolution is defined for small time intervals. However, it is not defined for all times, and the book concentrates on studying its singularities. The latter play a role analogous to that of singularities in Hamilton's program for Ricci flows. Furthermore, like in Perelman's seminal work, surgeries must be introduced in order to allow the evolution to pass through the singularities. The book discusses these and other topics. It is written in the style of lecture notes and provides a detailed discussion of the classical parametric approach by R. Hamilton and G. Huisken, as well as the results by other authors scattered over the literature of the last 25 years. The first chapter is devoted to definitions, geometric properties and the first results and examples of the mean curvature flow. Chapter 2 centers around the maximum principle and its applications, in particular, to the behavior of the curvature at singularities. Chapter 3 is devoted to type-I singularities and the monotonicity formula of Huisken, while Chapter 4 is devoted to type-II singularities. In Chapter 5 some particular results are considered, including a detailed consideration of evolving curves in the plane. The book finishes with 6 appendices.