Long time behaviour of the discrete volume preserving mean curvature flow in the flat torus

Abstract

We show that the discrete approximate volume preserving mean curvature flow in the flat torus $$\mathbb {T}^N$$ starting near a strictly stable critical set E of the perimeter converges in the long time to a translate of E exponentially fast. As an intermediate result we establish a new quantitative estimate of Alexandrov type for periodic strictly stable constant mean curvature hypersurfaces. Finally, in the two dimensional case a complete characterization of the long time behaviour of the discrete flow with arbitrary initial sets of finite perimeter is provided.