Convex ancient solutions of the mean curvature flow (Q892748)

Let \(\mathcal{M}\) be a closed \(n\)-dimensional manifold \((n \geq 2)\). A family of smooth immersions \(F:\mathcal{M} \times (t_0,t_1) \to \mathbb R^{n+1}\) is called a mean curvature flow if it satisfies \[ \frac{\partial F}{\partial t} (p,t) = -H(p,t)\nu(p,t), \quad p\in \mathcal{M}, t\in (t_0,t_1) \] where \(H(p,t)\) and \(\nu(p,t)\) are the mean curvature and the outer normal at the point \(F(p,t)\) of the surface \(\mathcal{M}_t = F(\cdot,t)(\mathcal{M})\), respectively. A solution is called ``ancient'' if it is defined for \(t\in (-\infty,0)\). In this paper the authors prove a new interior estimate in time for ancient compact convex solutions. Moreover they give a detailed list of characterizations of the shrinking sphere in terms of several natural geometric conditions. These include pinching of the second fondamental form, a scaling invariant diameter bound and a reverse isoperimetric inequality.