The free elastic flow for closed planar curves (Q6971214)

The paper focuses on the free elastic flow, namely the steepest descent \(L^2(ds)\)-gradient flow for Euler's elastic energy \(E[\gamma]=\frac{1}{2}\int k^2\,ds\), which is given by the evolution problem \N\[\N\partial_t\gamma=-\left(k_{ss}+\frac{1}{2} k^3\right)\nu,\quad\gamma(\cdot,0)=\gamma_0.\tag{1}\N\]\NHere, \(\gamma:\mathbb{S}^1\times [0,T)\to\mathbb{R}^2\) is a one-parameter family of smooth immersed curves \(\mathbb{S}^1:=\mathbb{R}/{\mathbb{Z}}\), \(k\) is the curvature scalar, \(\nu\) is the inward-pointing unit normal, and \(\gamma_0:\mathbb{S}^1\to\mathbb{R}^2\) is the initial datum. The authors prove that the free elastic flow \(\gamma\) of problem \((1)\) is asymptotically an \(\omega\)-circle, where \(\omega=|\frac{1}{2\pi}\int_{\gamma_0}k\,ds|\), in the sense that the rescaled flow \(\eta(\cdot,t)=\frac{1}{L(t)}\gamma(\cdot,t)\), (\(L\) is the length functional), converges smoothly as \(t\to\infty\), up to reparametrisation, to an \(\omega\)-fold circle.