English

The singular set of mean curvature flow with generic singularities

Differential Geometry 2015-02-25 v2 Analysis of PDEs Geometric Topology

Abstract

A mean curvature flow starting from a closed embedded hypersurface in Rn+1R^{n+1} must develop singularities. We show that if the flow has only generic singularities, then the space-time singular set is contained in finitely many compact embedded (n1)(n-1)-dimensional Lipschitz submanifolds plus a set of dimension at most n2n-2. If the initial hypersurface is mean convex, then all singularities are generic and the results apply. In R3R^3 and R4R^4, we show that for almost all times the evolving hypersurface is completely smooth and any connected component of the singular set is entirely contained in a time-slice. For 22 or 33-convex hypersurfaces in all dimensions, the same arguments lead to the same conclusion: the flow is completely smooth at almost all times and connected components of the singular set are contained in time-slices. A key technical point is a strong {\emph{parabolic}} Reifenberg property that we show in all dimensions and for all flows with only generic singularities. We also show that the entire flow clears out very rapidly after a generic singularity. These results are essentially optimal.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1405.5187,
  title  = {The singular set of mean curvature flow with generic singularities},
  author = {Tobias Holck Colding and William P. Minicozzi},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1405.5187},
  year   = {2015}
}