Allen–Cahn approximation of mean curvature flow in Riemannian manifolds, II: Brakke's flows

Abstract

We prove convergence of solutions to the parabolic Allen–Cahn equation to Brakke's motion by mean curvature in Riemannian manifolds with Ricci curvature bounded from below. Our results hold for a general class of initial conditions and extend previous results from [T. Ilmanen, Convergence of the Allen–Cahn equation to the Brakke's motion by mean curvature, J. Differential Geom. 31 (1993) 417–461] even in Euclidean space. We show that a sequence of measures, associated to energy density of solutions of the parabolic Allen–Cahn equation, converges in the limit to a family of rectifiable Radon measures, which evolves by mean curvature flow in the sense of Brakke. A key role is played by nonpositivity of the limiting energy discrepancy and a local almost monotonicity formula (a weak counterpart of Huisken's monotonicity formula) proved in [Allen–Cahn approximation of mean curvature flow in Riemannian manifolds, I, uniform estimates, to appear in Ann. Sc. Norm. Super. Pisa Cl. Sci.; arXiv:1308.0569], to get various density bounds for the limiting measures.