English

Scale-critical curve diffusion flows

Analysis of PDEs 2026-04-03 v1 Differential Geometry

Abstract

We introduce and study a one-parameter family of curve diffusion flows with a scale-critical cubic curvature term for closed immersed planar curves. We first classify all closed stationary solutions, showing that they are precisely circles or a unique family of ``super-lemniscates''. We then analyse the dynamical stability of homothetic circles. Under a sharp spectral condition, we establish, by purely variational methods, that any small perturbation of an ω\omega-fold circle monotonically approaches the unit ω\omega-circle after rescaling, translation, and reparametrisation. As a corollary, we determine the sharp ranges of the parameter for the stability of an embedded circle, and of all ω\omega-circles. We also uncover a striking arithmetic structure in the stability landscape, where the stability of ω\omega-circles depends non-monotonically on ω\omega.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2604.01716,
  title  = {Scale-critical curve diffusion flows},
  author = {Tatsuya Miura and Glen Wheeler},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.01716},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

26 pages, 3 figures

R2 v1 2026-07-01T11:50:29.563Z