Contraction of surfaces by harmonic mean curvature flows and nonuniqueness of their self similar solutions (Q5944882)

The author considers a family \(F(x,t)\) of smooth embeddings of the 2-dimensional sphere \(S^2\) to \(\mathbb R^3\) satisfying the following equation: \[ {\partial F \over \partial t}(x,t) = -(H_{-1}(x,t))^\alpha \nu(x,t), \quad \text{ for} \quad x \in S^2, t>0, \alpha > 0. \] Here \(\nu(x,t)\) is the outer unit normal vector of the surface \(M_t=\{F(x,t)\), \(x \in S^2\}\) and \(H_{-1} = ((k_1^{-1} + k_2^{-1})/2)^{-1}\), where \(k_1\), \(k_2\) are the principal curvatures of \(M_t\). \(F\) is called a self similar solution of this equation if there exists a surface \(M^*\) and a continuous function \(h\) such that \(M_t = h(t) M^* + P\), where \(P\) is the parallel transformation. There exists a trivial self similar solution such that \(M_t\) is a sphere. The main result of the paper under review is that for some \(\alpha \in (0,1)\) the equation has strictly convex self similar solutions other than the trivial solution.