Length-constrained, length-penalised and free elastic flows of planar curves inside cones (Q6941584)

The authors consider the family of curves \(\alpha (\cdot ,t)\) moving with normal velocity \(F\) according to the equation: \N\[\N\frac{\partial \alpha }{ \partial t}=-F[k]\nu \N\] \Nand starting from the initial condition \(\alpha (\cdot ,0)=\alpha _{0}\).\ Here, \(F[k]\) is the normal speed of the curve, \( \nu \) the outer unit normal vector field to the curve \(\alpha \), \N\[ \Nk=\left\langle \kappa ,\nu \right\rangle =-\left\langle \alpha _{ss},\nu \right\rangle \N\] \Nis the scalar curvature of \(\alpha \), and \(\alpha _{0}:[-1,1]\times \lbrack 0,T)\rightarrow \mathbb{R}^{2}\) is an initial smooth, immersed, regular, and open planar curve with boundary. The interior of the initial curve \(\alpha _{0}\) is supposed to be contained in the region \N\[ \N\{(x,y)\in \mathbb{R}^{2}:(x,y)=(\rho \cos\theta,\rho \sin\theta),\ \rho >0,\ \theta _{2}<\theta <\theta _{1}\},\N\] \Nto meet the boundary at each endpoint perpendicularly and to be such that the curvature \(k_{0}\) of \(\alpha _{0}\) satisfies \((k_{0})_{s}(-1)=(k_{0})_{s}(1)=0\). \N\NThree speeds \(F\) are considered: \N\[\NF=-k_{ss}-\frac{1}{2}k^{3}+\lambda k,\N\] \Nfor any constant \( \lambda >0\); \N\[\NF=-k_{ss}-\frac{1}{2}k^{3}+\lambda (t)k,\N\] \Nfor a specific function \(\lambda (t)\); \N\[\NF=-k_{ss}-\frac{1}{2}k^{3},\N\] \Nthe `free elastic flow', where \(s\) is the arc-length of \(\alpha \) defined through \( s(u,t)=\int_{-1}^{u}\left\vert \alpha _{u}(\widetilde{u},t)\right\vert d \widetilde{u}\). The purpose of the paper is to prove the global-in-time existence of such flows and to describe their long-time behavior in the \( C^{\infty }\)-topology to some circular arc. For each speed, the authors impose further hypotheses on the initial curve \(\alpha _{0}\) and on the rotation number \(\omega =\frac{\theta _{2}-\theta _{1}}{2\pi }\). \N\NThe proofs are based on Poincaré-Sobolev-Wirtinger inequalities for curves with boundaries and properties of such flows. The authors introduce the appropriate energy functional and they first prove short-time existence results. Then, they prove bounds which guarantee the long-time existence of the solutions. They finally prove the pointwise exponential decay of the curvature to its average.