Elastic flow of curves with partial free boundary (Q6588176)

The paper is devoted to the geometric evolution of a curve with a partially free boundary. The author studies the gradient flow of the elastic energy \N\[\N\mathcal{E}(\gamma)=\displaystyle\int_{\gamma}|\kappa|^2+\mu\,ds,\N\]\Nwhere \(\kappa\) is the curvature and \(\mu >0\), under the assumption that the boundary points of the curve remain attached to the \(x\)-axis. Using Solonnikov theory and a contraction argument he shows the short-time existence of a unique smooth solution and the geometric uniqueness of the evolution problem. The long-time existence using the curvature bounds is also proved.