Finite time singularities for the locally constrained Willmore flow of surfaces

. This coincides with the Helfrich functional with zero `spontaneous curvature'. Our first results are a concentration-compactness alternative and interior estimates for the flow. For initial data with small energy, we prove preservation of embeddedness, and by directly estimating the Euler-Lagrange operator from below in

L^{2}

we obtain that the maximal time of existence is finite. Combining this result with the analysis of a suitable blowup allows us to show that for such initial data the flow contracts to a round point in finite time.

Review text

The authors study the locally constrained Willmore flow of surfaces, which is the steepest descent \(L^2\)-gradient flow of the following locally constrained Willmore functional \[ \mathcal{W}_{\lambda_1,\lambda_2}(f)=\frac 14\int_{\Sigma}H^2d\mu+\lambda_1\mu(\Sigma)+\lambda_2\mathrm{Vol}(\Sigma), \] where \(f:\Sigma\to\mathbb{R}^3\) gives the smooth immersion, \(\lambda_1,\lambda_2\) are real numbers, \(\mu(\Sigma)\) denotes the surface area and \(\mathrm{Vol}(\Sigma)\) denotes the signed enclosed volume. The Euler-Lagrange operator of \( \mathcal{W}_{\lambda_1,\lambda_2}\) is given by \[ \mathbf{W}_{\lambda_1,\lambda_2}(f)=\Delta H+H|{A^o}|^2-2\lambda_1H-2\lambda_2. \] The locally constrained Willmore flow is then defined as \[ \begin{cases}\frac{\partial f}{\partial t}=-\mathbf{W}_{\lambda_1,\lambda_2}(f)\nu,\\ f(\cdot,0)=f_0(\cdot), \end{cases}\tag{CW} \] When \(\lambda_1=\lambda_2=0\), \(\mathcal{W}_{\lambda_1,\lambda_2}(f)\) and the flow (CW) reduce to the well-known Willmore functional and Willmore flow. The main purpose of this paper is to study the flow (CW) with initial data that has small \(\mathcal{W}_{\lambda_1,\lambda_2}\) energy. The authors show that there exists an \(\epsilon>0\) depending only on \(\lambda_1,\lambda_2\) such that if \(\mathrm{Vol}(\Sigma_0)>0\) and \[ \mathcal{W}_{\lambda_1,\lambda_2}(f_0)\leq 4\pi+\epsilon, \tag{\(*\)} \] then the maximum existence time \(T\) is finite and satisfies \[ T<\frac 1{4\pi\lambda_1^2}\mathcal{W}_{\lambda_1,\lambda_2}(f_0)+1. \] Moreover, the flow \(f(\Sigma,t)\) shrinks to a round point as \(t\to T\). To prove this result, the authors use some idea in recent work on the Willmore flow due to Kuwert and Schätzle. Since the flow is of fourth order and may develop self-intersections, the authors first prove that if the initial data has energy \(\mathcal{W}_{\lambda_1,\lambda_2}\) satisfies (\(*\)), then the embeddedness is preserved along the flow (CW). Then the energy \(\mathcal{W}_{\lambda_1,\lambda_2}\) has a good control due to its monotonicity. Since the maximum principle is not applicable for the flow (CW), the authors instead attack this problem by deriving integral curvature estimates via the interpolation inequalities, divergence theorem and the Michael-Simon Sobolev inequalities. The asymptotical behavior of the flow as \(t\to T\) is proved by the standard blow up analysis and relies on a concentration-compactness alternative that classifies the finite singular times as being local concentrations of the curvature in \(L^2\).

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