Self-intersections for the surface diffusion and the volume-preserving mean curvature flow (Q5933806)

The authors study two geometric evolution equations for hypersurfaces in \(\mathbb{R}^n\): the surface diffusion, in which the normal velocity of the moving hypersurface equals its Laplace Beltrami of the mean curvature \(H\), and the volume preserving mean curvature flow, where the normal velocity is \(-(H-\overline H)\), \(\overline H\) being the average of \(H\) over the hypersurface. The authors are concerned with the question whether these flows preserve embeddedness and provide a negative answer in both cases by construction embedded initial surfaces which develop self intersections under the flow while staying smooth.