Elastic flow of networks: short-time existence result

Abstract

In this paper we study the $$L^2$$ -gradient flow of the penalized elastic energy on networks of q-curves in $$\mathbb {R}^{n}$$ for $$q \ge 3$$ . Each curve is fixed at one end-point and at the other is joint to the other curves at a movable q-junction. For this geometric evolution problem with natural boundary condition we show the existence of smooth solutions for a (possibly) short interval of time. Since the geometric problem is not well-posed, due to the freedom in reparametrization of curves, we consider a fourth-order non-degenerate parabolic quasilinear system, called the analytic problem, and show first a short-time existence result for this parabolic system. The proof relies on applying Solonnikov’s theory on linear parabolic systems and Banach fixed point theorem in proper Holder spaces. Then the original geometric problem is solved by establishing the relation between the analytical solutions and the solutions to the geometrical problem.