Closed self-similar solutions to flows by negative powers of curvature (Q6057167)

The author considers the warped product manifold \(\overline{M}^{n+1}=[0, \overline{r})\times _{\lambda }N^{n}\), with metric \(\overline{g}=dr\otimes dr+\lambda ^{2}(r)g_{N}\), where \((N^{n},g_{N})\) is a closed Riemannian manifold and \(\lambda (r)\) a smooth and positive function of \(r\in (0, \overline{r})\). A hypersurface \(M^{n}\) in \(\overline{M}^{n+1}\) is called a self-similar solution if it satisfies \[F^{\beta }(\mathcal{W}(x))=\overline{g }(\lambda (r(x))\partial _{r}(x),\nu (x)),\] where \(F\) is a function of the eigenvalues of the shape operator \(\mathcal{W}\) of \(M^{n+1}\) which satisfies appropriate hypotheses, and \(\nu \) denotes the unit outward normal vector. The first main result of the paper proves that if the warped product manifold \(\overline{M}^{n+1}\) satisfies \[\mathrm{Ric}_{N}\geq (n-1)(\lambda ^{\prime 2}-\lambda \lambda ^{\prime \prime })g_{N},\] then every hypersurface \(M^{n}\) which is mean convex, that is, such that its mean curvature \(H=\frac{1}{n} (\kappa _{1}+\ldots +\kappa _{n})\) is positive everywhere, and satisfies \( H^{-\alpha }=\overline{g}(\lambda \partial _{r},\nu )\), where \(\alpha >0\) is a constant, is a slice \(\{r_{0}\}\times N^{n}\) for some \(r_{0}\in (0, \overline{r})\). The second main result proves that if \(\overline{M}^{n+1}=[0, \overline{r})\times _{\lambda }N^{n}\) is a warped product manifold, where \( (N^{n},g_{N})\) is a closed Riemannian manifold with constant sectional curvature \(c\), \(\lambda (r)\) satisfies \(\lambda ^{\prime }(r)>0\) and \[\frac{ \lambda (r)^{\prime \prime }}{\lambda (r)}+\frac{c-\lambda (r)^{\prime 2}}{ \lambda (r)^{2}}\geq 0,\] \(M^{n}\) is a closed, immersed hypersurface in \( \overline{M}^{n+1}\) satisfying \(F^{-\alpha }=\overline{g}(\lambda \partial _{r},\nu )\), for some positive constant \(\alpha \), and if the principal curvatures \(\kappa \) of \(M^{n}\) are in a cone such that regularity, symmetry, positivity, 1-homogeneity properties of \(f\) defined through \(F( \mathcal{W})=f(\kappa (\mathcal{W}))\), among other properties, hold true, then \(M^{n}\) is a slice \(\{r_{0}\}\times N^{n}\) for some \(r_{0}\in (0,\overline{r})\). From these two main results, the author derives other conditions which lead to the same result.\ For the proof, the author first analyzes the conditions imposed to \(f\) and presents examples of such functions. Assuming that \(M^{n}\) is a closed, immersed hypersurface in \(\overline{M}^{n+1}\) satisfying \( F^{-\alpha }=\overline{g}(\lambda \partial _{r},\nu )\), he draws computations on the pull-back \(\Phi \) on \(M^{n}\) by the immersion \( M^{n}\rightarrow \overline{M}^{n+1}\). He introduces the auxiliary function \[ P=\Phi -\frac{\alpha }{\alpha +1}u^{\frac{\alpha +1}{\alpha }}\] and he proves properties of this function, its gradient and its Laplacian, which allow proving the two main results.