Numerically computing the index of mean curvature flow self-shrinkers

DOI10.1007/S00025-021-01550-YMaRDI QIDQ2072202zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Yakov Berchenko-Kogan

Publication date 26 January 2022

Published in Results in Mathematics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/2007.06094

zbMATH Keywords

Angenent torusmean curvature flowself-shrinkers

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Surfaces in Euclidean and related spaces (53A05) Flows related to mean curvature (53E10) Numerical solution of eigenvalue problems involving ordinary differential equations (65L15)

Abstract: Surfaces that evolve by mean curvature flow develop singularities. These singularities can be modeled by self-shrinkers, surfaces that shrink by dilations under the flow. Singularities modeled on classical self-shrinkers, namely spheres and cylinders, are stable under perturbations of the flow. In contrast, singularities modeled on other self-shrinkers, such as the Angenent torus, are unstable: perturbing the flow will generally change the kind of singularity. One can measure the degree of instability by computing the Morse index of the self-shrinker, viewed as a critical point of an appropriate functional. In this paper, we present a numerical method for computing the index of rotationally symmetric self-shrinkers. We apply this method to the Angenent torus, the first known nontrivial example of a self-shrinker. We find that, excluding dilations and translations, the index of the Angenent torus is $5$, which is consistent with the lower bound of $3$ from the work of Liu and the upper bound of $29$ from our earlier work. Also, we unexpectedly discover two additional variations of the Angenent torus with eigenvalue $-1$.

Review text

Mean curvature flow is a geometric evolution equation for surfaces \(\Sigma \subset \mathbb{R}^3,\) under which each point \(x \in \Sigma\) moves in the inward normal direction proportionally to the mean curvature of \(\Sigma\) at \(x.\) Surfaces that evolve by mean curvature flow develop singularities. These singularities can be modeled by self-shrinkers, surfaces that shrink by dilations under the flow. In this paper, the author presents a numerical method for computing the index of rotationally symmetric self-shrinkers. He applies the method to the Angenent torus, the first known nontrivial example of a self-shrinker. He also obtains numerical evidence that, excluding dilations and translations, the index of the Angenent torus is 5, which is consistent with estimates obtained in previous works.

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Cited in

(4)

• Bounds on the index of rotationally symmetric self-shrinking tori
• The entropy of the angenent torus is approximately 1.85122
• scientific article; zbMATH DE number 2158995 (Why is no real title available?)
• Mean curvature flow with generic low-entropy initial data. II

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