Mean curvature type flow and sharp Michael-Simon inequalities (Q6119949)

The authors consider the constrained mean curvature flow \[ X:\Sigma \times \lbrack 0,T)\rightarrow \mathbb{R}^{n+1}, n\geq 2, \] of starshaped hypersurfaces in \(\mathbb{R}^{n+1}\) which satisfy \[ \frac{\partial }{ \partial t}X(x,t)=-(fH+\frac{n}{n-1}\frac{\partial f}{\partial X})\nu (x,t), X(\cdot ,0)=X_{0}(\cdot ), \] where \(\nu (x,t)\) is the unit outer normal, \(H \) the mean curvature of \(\Sigma _{t}=X(\Sigma ,t)\), \(f\in C^{\infty }(\Sigma _{t})\) a positive function such that \(f(X)=\Psi _{1}\circ r(\xi ,t)\), and \[ \widehat{\Psi }_{1}(r)=(n-1)\frac{1}{r^{2}}\Psi _{1}(r)+\frac{1}{r}\frac{ \partial \Psi _{1}}{\partial r}(r) \] is monotonically increasing with respect to \(r\) for \(r>0\) and such that there exists a zero for \(\widehat{\Psi }_{1}(r)\), and \(X_{0}:\Sigma \rightarrow \mathbb{R}^{n+1}\) is a smooth embedding of a closed hypersurface \(\Sigma \) in \(\mathbb{R}^{n+1}\) such that \(\Sigma _{0}=X_{0}(\Sigma )\) is starshaped. The authors first prove that the above flow problem has a unique smooth solution \(\Sigma _{t}=X(\Sigma ,t)\) for \( t\in \lbrack 0,+\infty )\), such that \(M_{t}=\Sigma _{t}\cup \partial \Sigma _{t}\) converges to a sphere as \(t\rightarrow +\infty \) in the \(C^{\infty }\) -topology. The main result proves that if \(M_{0}\) is a smooth, compact, and starshaped hypersurface in \(\mathbb{R}^{n+1}\) (possibly with boundary \( \partial M_{0}\)), for any positive function \(f\in C^{\infty }(M_{0})\) of the form \(f=\Psi _{1}\circ r\) satisfying the above assumptions, there holds \[ \int_{M_{0}}\sqrt{\left\vert \nabla ^{M_{0}}f\right\vert ^{2}+f^{2}H^{2}} d\mu +\int_{\partial M_{0}}fd\mu \geq n\left\vert B^{n}\right\vert ^{1/n}\left( \int_{M_{0}}f^{n/(n-1)}d\mu \right) ^{(n-1)/n}. \] If \(M_{0}\) is closed, then \[ \int_{M_{0}}\sqrt{\left\vert \nabla ^{M_{0}}f\right\vert ^{2}+f^{2}H^{2}}d\mu \geq n\left\vert B^{n}\right\vert ^{1/n}\left( \int_{M_{0}}f^{n/(n-1)}d\mu \right) ^{(n-1)/n} \] and equality holds if and only if \(M_{0}\) is a sphere. For the proof, the authors apply the divergence theorem and the standard elliptic regularity theory to simplify by scaling the original inequality \[ \int_{M}\sqrt{\left\vert \nabla ^{M}f\right\vert ^{2}+f^{2}H^{2}}+\int_{M}f\geq n\left\vert B^{n}\right\vert ^{1/n}\left( \int_{M}f^{n/(n-1)}d\mu \right) ^{(n-1)/n}, \] valid for a compact hypersurface \(M\) in \(\mathbb{R}^{n+1}\) (possibly with boundary \( \partial M\)), and \(f\) a positive smooth function on \(M\). They then prove that \(\int_{\Sigma _{t}}f^{n/(n-1)}d\mu _{t}\) monotonically decreases along the flow, which implies that the preceding inequality holds for any evolving hypersurface. With the convergence result for the flow, they prove the sharp constant in the preceding inequality and a necessary and sufficient condition for the equality to occur. In the second part of their paper, the authors consider the inverse mean curvature type flow \[ \frac{\partial }{ \partial t}X(x,t)=(\frac{E_{k-2}(\kappa )}{E_{k-1}(\kappa )}-h)\nu (x,t), k=2,\ldots ,n, X(\cdot ,0)=X_{0}(\cdot ), \] where \(\nu (x,t)\) is the unit outer normal, \(\kappa =(\kappa _{1},\ldots ,\kappa _{n})\) the principal curvatures of \(\Sigma _{t}=X(\Sigma ,t)\), \[ E_{k}(\kappa )=\left( \begin{array}{c} n \\ k \end{array} \right) ^{-1}\sigma _{k}(\kappa ) \] are the normalized \(k\)-th mean curvature from the \(k\)-th mean curvatures \(\sigma _{k}(\kappa )\), and \(X_{0}:\Sigma \rightarrow \mathbb{R}^{n+1}\) is a smooth embedding such that \(\Sigma _{0}\) is a closed and \((k-1\))-convex hypersurface in \(\mathbb{R}^{n+1}\). The authors prove an existence result. The inverse mean curvature type flow has a unique smooth solution \(\Sigma _{t}=X(\Sigma ,t)\) for all \(t\in \lbrack 0,+\infty )\). Moreover, \(\Sigma _{t}\) is strictly \((k-1)\)-convex for each \( t\geq 0\) and converges exponentially to a sphere of radius \(R\) in the \( C^{\infty }\)-topology as \(t\rightarrow +\infty \), where \(R\) is determined by \( V_{k-1}(\Omega _{0})=V_{k-1}(B_{R}^{n+1})\). The main result here proves that if \(M_{0}\) is a smooth, compact and \((k-1)\)-convex hypersurface in \(\mathbb{R }^{n+1}\) (possibly with boundary \(\partial M_{0}\)), \(\Omega _{0}\) is the domain enclosed by \(M_{0}\), and \(f\) satisfies \(f(X)=\Psi _{2}\circ r(\xi ,t)\) , such that \(g(r)=\Psi _{2}^{\frac{n-k+1}{n-k}}(r)\) is non-decreasing with respect to \(r\) and satisfies the second order elliptic equation \[ \Delta g= \frac{n}{k-1}\frac{1}{r-\left\langle \xi ,\nabla r\right\rangle }\frac{ \partial g}{\partial r}, \] then for any \(2\leq k\leq n-1\) one has \[ \int_{M_{0}}\sqrt{\sigma _{k}^{2}f^{2}+\sigma _{k-1}^{2}\left\vert \nabla ^{M_{0}}f\right\vert ^{2}}d\mu +\int_{\partial M_{0}}\sigma _{k-1}fd\mu \geq n(y_{k}\circ z_{k-1}^{-1}(V_{k-1}(\Omega _{0}))^{\frac{1}{n+1-k}}\left( \int_{M_{0}}\sigma _{k-1}f^{\frac{n+1-k}{n-k}}d\mu \right) ^{\frac{n-k}{n+1-k }}, \] where \[ y_{k}(r)=\left( \begin{array}{c} n \\ k-1 \end{array} \right) f^{\frac{n+1-k}{n-k}}z_{k}(r), \] with \(z_{k}(r)=V_{k}(B_{r}^{n+1})\) the \(k \)-th quermassintegral for the sphere of radius \(r\). In particular, if \(M_{0}\) is closed, then \[ \int_{M_{0}}\sqrt{\sigma _{k}^{2}f^{2}+\sigma _{k-1}^{2}\left\vert \nabla ^{M_{0}}f\right\vert ^{2}}d\mu \geq n(y_{k}\circ z_{k-1}^{-1}(V_{k-1}(\Omega _{0}))^{\frac{1}{n+1-k}}\left( \int_{M_{0}}\sigma _{k-1}f^{\frac{n+1-k}{n-k}}d\mu \right) ^{\frac{n-k}{n+1-k }}, \] and the equality holds if and only if \(M_{0}\) is a sphere. The authors thus extend the sharp Michael-Simon inequalities to the case of mean curvatures.