Mean Curvature Flow
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Mean Curvature Flow
In the field of differential geometry in mathematics, mean curvature flow is an example of a geometric flow of hypersurfaces in a Riemannian manifold (for example, smooth surfaces in 3-dimensional Euclidean space). Intuitively, a family of surfaces evolves under mean curvature flow if the normal component of the velocity of which a point on the surface moves is given by the mean curvature of the surface. For example, a round sphere evolves under mean curvature flow by shrinking inward uniformly (since the mean curvature vector of a sphere points inward). Except in special cases, the mean curvature flow develops singularities. Under the constraint that volume enclosed is constant, this is called surface tension flow. It is a parabolic partial differential equation, and can be interpreted as "smoothing". Existence and uniqueness The following was shown by Michael Gage and Richard S. Hamilton as an application of Hamilton's general existence theorem for parabolic geometric f ...
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Differential Geometry
Differential geometry is a mathematical discipline that studies the geometry of smooth shapes and smooth spaces, otherwise known as smooth manifolds. It uses the techniques of differential calculus, integral calculus, linear algebra and multilinear algebra. The field has its origins in the study of spherical geometry as far back as antiquity. It also relates to astronomy, the geodesy of the Earth, and later the study of hyperbolic geometry by Lobachevsky. The simplest examples of smooth spaces are the plane and space curves and surfaces in the three-dimensional Euclidean space, and the study of these shapes formed the basis for development of modern differential geometry during the 18th and 19th centuries. Since the late 19th century, differential geometry has grown into a field concerned more generally with geometric structures on differentiable manifolds. A geometric structure is one which defines some notion of size, distance, shape, volume, or other rigidifying structu ...
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Gauss Map
In differential geometry, the Gauss map (named after Carl F. Gauss) maps a surface in Euclidean space R3 to the unit sphere ''S''2. Namely, given a surface ''X'' lying in R3, the Gauss map is a continuous map ''N'': ''X'' → ''S''2 such that ''N''(''p'') is a unit vector orthogonal to ''X'' at ''p'', namely a normal vector to ''X'' at ''p''. The Gauss map can be defined (globally) if and only if the surface is orientable, in which case its degree is half the Euler characteristic. The Gauss map can always be defined locally (i.e. on a small piece of the surface). The Jacobian determinant of the Gauss map is equal to Gaussian curvature, and the differential of the Gauss map is called the shape operator. Gauss first wrote a draft on the topic in 1825 and published in 1827. There is also a Gauss map for a link, which computes linking number. Generalizations The Gauss map can be defined for hypersurfaces in R''n'' as a map from a hypersurface to the unit sphere ''S''''n'' &min ...
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Curve-shortening Flow
In mathematics, the curve-shortening flow is a process that modifies a smooth curve in the Euclidean plane by moving its points perpendicularly to the curve at a speed proportional to the curvature. The curve-shortening flow is an example of a geometric flow, and is the one-dimensional case of the mean curvature flow. Other names for the same process include the Euclidean shortening flow, geometric heat flow, and arc length evolution. As the points of any smooth simple closed curve move in this way, the curve remains simple and smooth. It loses area at a constant rate, and its perimeter decreases as quickly as possible for any continuous curve evolution. If the curve is non-convex, its total absolute curvature decreases monotonically, until it becomes convex. Once convex, the isoperimetric ratio of the curve decreases as the curve converges to a circular shape, before collapsing to a single point of singularity. If two disjoint simple smooth closed curves evolve, they remain disjo ...
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Diffusion Equation
The diffusion equation is a parabolic partial differential equation. In physics, it describes the macroscopic behavior of many micro-particles in Brownian motion, resulting from the random movements and collisions of the particles (see Fick's laws of diffusion). In mathematics, it is related to Markov processes, such as random walks, and applied in many other fields, such as materials science, information theory, and biophysics. The diffusion equation is a special case of the convection–diffusion equation, when bulk velocity is zero. It is equivalent to the heat equation under some circumstances. Statement The equation is usually written as: where is the density of the diffusing material at location and time and is the collective diffusion coefficient for density at location ; and represents the vector differential operator del. If the diffusion coefficient depends on the density then the equation is nonlinear, otherwise it is linear. The equation above applies wh ...
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Inverse Mean Curvature Flow
In the mathematical fields of differential geometry and geometric analysis, inverse mean curvature flow (IMCF) is a geometric flow of submanifolds of a Riemannian or pseudo-Riemannian manifold. It has been used to prove a certain case of the Riemannian Penrose inequality, which is of interest in general relativity. Formally, given a pseudo-Riemannian manifold and a smooth manifold , an inverse mean curvature flow consists of an open interval and a smooth map from into such that :\frac=\frac, where is the mean curvature vector of the immersion . If is Riemannian, if is closed with , and if a given smooth immersion of into has mean curvature which is nowhere zero, then there exists a unique inverse mean curvature flow whose "initial data" is . Gerhardt's convergence theorem A simple example of inverse mean curvature flow is given by a family of concentric round hyperspheres in Euclidean space. If the dimension of such a sphere is and its radius is , then its mean ...
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Curve-shortening Flow
In mathematics, the curve-shortening flow is a process that modifies a smooth curve in the Euclidean plane by moving its points perpendicularly to the curve at a speed proportional to the curvature. The curve-shortening flow is an example of a geometric flow, and is the one-dimensional case of the mean curvature flow. Other names for the same process include the Euclidean shortening flow, geometric heat flow, and arc length evolution. As the points of any smooth simple closed curve move in this way, the curve remains simple and smooth. It loses area at a constant rate, and its perimeter decreases as quickly as possible for any continuous curve evolution. If the curve is non-convex, its total absolute curvature decreases monotonically, until it becomes convex. Once convex, the isoperimetric ratio of the curve decreases as the curve converges to a circular shape, before collapsing to a single point of singularity. If two disjoint simple smooth closed curves evolve, they remain disjo ...
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Heat Kernel
In the mathematical study of heat conduction and diffusion, a heat kernel is the fundamental solution to the heat equation on a specified domain with appropriate boundary conditions. It is also one of the main tools in the study of the spectrum of the Laplace operator, and is thus of some auxiliary importance throughout mathematical physics. The heat kernel represents the evolution of temperature in a region whose boundary is held fixed at a particular temperature (typically zero), such that an initial unit of heat energy is placed at a point at time ''t'' = 0. ] The most well-known heat kernel is the heat kernel of ''d''-dimensional Euclidean space R''d'', which has the form of a time-varying Gaussian function, :K(t,x,y) = \exp\left(t\Delta\right)(x,y) = \frac e^\qquad(x,y\in\mathbb^d,t>0)\, This solves the heat equation :\frac(t,x,y) = \Delta_x K(t,x,y)\, for all ''t'' > 0 and ''x'',''y'' ∈ R''d'', where Δ is the Laplace operator, with the i ...
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Convolution
In mathematics (in particular, functional analysis), convolution is a operation (mathematics), mathematical operation on two function (mathematics), functions ( and ) that produces a third function (f*g) that expresses how the shape of one is modified by the other. The term ''convolution'' refers to both the result function and to the process of computing it. It is defined as the integral of the product of the two functions after one is reflected about the y-axis and shifted. The choice of which function is reflected and shifted before the integral does not change the integral result (see #Properties, commutativity). The integral is evaluated for all values of shift, producing the convolution function. Some features of convolution are similar to cross-correlation: for real-valued functions, of a continuous or discrete variable, convolution (f*g) differs from cross-correlation (f \star g) only in that either or is reflected about the y-axis in convolution; thus it is a cross-c ...
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Huisken's Monotonicity Formula
In differential geometry, Huisken's monotonicity formula states that, if an -dimensional surface in -dimensional Euclidean space undergoes the mean curvature flow, then its convolution with an appropriately scaled and time-reversed heat kernel is non-increasing.. The result is named after Gerhard Huisken, who published it in 1990. Specifically, the -dimensional time-reversed heat kernel converging to a point at time may be given by the formula :u(x,t) = \frac\exp\left(-\frac\right). Then Huisken's monotonicity formula gives an explicit expression for the derivative of :\int u(x,t) d\mu, where is the area element of the evolving surface at time . The expression involves the negation of another integral, whose integrand is non-negative, so the derivative is non-positive. Typically, and are chosen as the time and position of a singularity of the evolving surface, and the monotonicity formula can be used to analyze the behavior of the surface as it evolves towards this singulari ...
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Lagrangian Submanifold
In differential geometry, a subject of mathematics, a symplectic manifold is a smooth manifold, M , equipped with a closed nondegenerate differential 2-form \omega , called the symplectic form. The study of symplectic manifolds is called symplectic geometry or symplectic topology. Symplectic manifolds arise naturally in abstract formulations of classical mechanics and analytical mechanics as the cotangent bundles of manifolds. For example, in the Hamiltonian formulation of classical mechanics, which provides one of the major motivations for the field, the set of all possible configurations of a system is modeled as a manifold, and this manifold's cotangent bundle describes the phase space of the system. Motivation Symplectic manifolds arise from classical mechanics; in particular, they are a generalization of the phase space of a closed system. In the same way the Hamilton equations allow one to derive the time evolution of a system from a set of differential equati ...
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Kähler–Einstein Metric
In differential geometry, a Kähler–Einstein metric on a complex manifold is a Riemannian metric that is both a Kähler metric and an Einstein metric. A manifold is said to be Kähler–Einstein if it admits a Kähler–Einstein metric. The most important special case of these are the Calabi–Yau manifolds, which are Kähler and Ricci-flat. The most important problem for this area is the existence of Kähler–Einstein metrics for compact Kähler manifolds. This problem can be split up into three cases dependent on the sign of the first Chern class of the Kähler manifold: * When the first Chern class is negative, there is always a Kähler–Einstein metric, as Thierry Aubin and Shing-Tung Yau proved independently. * When the first Chern class is zero, there is always a Kähler–Einstein metric, as Yau proved in the Calabi conjecture. That leads to the name Calabi–Yau manifolds. He was awarded with the Fields Medal partly because of this work. * The third case, the positiv ...
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Isoperimetric
In mathematics, the isoperimetric inequality is a geometric inequality involving the perimeter of a set and its volume. In n-dimensional space \R^n the inequality lower bounds the surface area or perimeter \operatorname(S) of a set S\subset\R^n by its volume \operatorname(S), :\operatorname(S)\geq n \operatorname(S)^ \, \operatorname(B_1)^, where B_1\subset\R^n is a unit sphere. The equality holds only when S is a sphere in \R^n. On a plane, i.e. when n=2, the isoperimetric inequality relates the square of the circumference of a closed curve and the area of a plane region it encloses. '' Isoperimetric'' literally means "having the same perimeter". Specifically in \R ^2, the isoperimetric inequality states, for the length ''L'' of a closed curve and the area ''A'' of the planar region that it encloses, that : L^2 \ge 4\pi A, and that equality holds if and only if the curve is a circle. The isoperimetric problem is to determine a plane figure of the largest possible area whose ...
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