No Arabic abstract
We give a twistorial interpretation of geometric structures on a Riemannian manifold, as sections of homogeneous fibre bundles, following an original insight by Wood (2003). The natural Dirichlet energy induces an abstract harmonicity condition, which gives rise to a geometric gradient flow. We establish a number of analytic properties for this flow, such as uniqueness, smoothness, short-time existence, and some sufficient conditions for long-time existence. This description potentially subsumes a large class of geometric PDE problems from different contexts. As applications, we recover and unify a number of results in the literature: for the isometric flow of ${rm G}_2$-structures, by Grigorian (2017, 2019), Bagaglini (2019), and Dwivedi-Gianniotis-Karigiannis (2019); and for harmonic almost complex structures, by He (2019) and He-Li (2019). Our theory also establishes original properties regarding harmonic flows of parallelisms and almost contact structures.
In this article, we will use the harmonic mean curvature flow to prove a new class of Alexandrov-Fenchel type inequalities for strictly convex hypersurfaces in hyperbolic space in terms of total curvature, which is the integral of Gaussian curvature on the hypersurface. We will also use the harmonic mean curvature flow to prove a new class of geometric inequalities for horospherically convex hypersurfaces in hyperbolic space. Using these new Alexandrov-Fenchel type inequalities and the inverse mean curvature flow, we obtain an Alexandrov-Fenchel inequality for strictly convex hypersurfaces in hyperbolic space, which was previously proved for horospherically convex hypersurfaces by Wang and Xia [44]. Finally, we use the mean curvature flow to prove a new Heintze-Karcher type inequality for hypersurfaces with positive Ricci curvature in hyperbolic space.
We define and study the harmonic heat flow for almost complex structures which are compatible with a Riemannian structure $(M, g)$. This is a tensor-valued version of harmonic map heat flow. We prove that if the initial almost complex structure $J$ has small energy (depending on the norm $| abla J|$), then the flow exists for all time and converges to a Kahler structure. We also prove that there is a finite time singularity if the initial energy is sufficiently small but there is no Kahler structure in the homotopy class. A main technical tool is a version of monotonicity formula, similar as in the theory of the harmonic map heat flow. We also construct an almost complex structure on a flat four tori with small energy such that the harmonic heat flow blows up at finite time with such an initial data.
We study the existence and regularity of energy-minimizing harmonic almost complex structures. We have proved results similar to the theory of harmonic maps, notably the classical results of Schoen-Uhlenbeck and recent advance by Cheeger-Naber.
Inspired by work of Colding-Minicozzi on mean curvature flow, Zhang introduced a notion of entropy stability for harmonic map flow. We build further upon this work in several directions. First we prove the equivalence of entropy stability with a more computationally tractable $mathcal F$-stability. Then, focusing on the case of spherical targets, we prove a general instability result for high-entropy solitons. Finally, we exploit results of Lin-Wang to observe long time existence and convergence results for maps into certain convex domains and how they relate to generic singularities of harmonic map flow.
We formulate and study the isometric flow of $mathrm{Spin}(7)$-structures on compact $8$-manifolds, as an instance of the harmonic flow of geometric structures. Starting from a general perspective, we establish Shi-type estimates and a correspondence between harmonic solitons and self-similar solutions for arbitrary isometric flows of $H$-structures. We then specialise to $H=mathrm{Spin}(7)subsetmathrm{SO}(8)$, obtaining conditions for long-time existence, via a monotonicity formula along the flow, which actually leads to an $varepsilon$-regularity theorem. Moreover, we prove Cheeger--Gromov and Hamilton-type compactness theorems for the solutions of the harmonic flow, and we characterise Type-$mathrm{I}$ singularities as being modelled on shrinking solitons.We also establish a Bryant-type description of isometric $mathrm{Spin}(7)$-structures, based on squares of spinors, which may be of independent interest.