This work investigates the formation of singularities under the steepest descent L^2-gradient flow of {{,mathrm{{ W}},}}_{lambda _1, lambda _2} with zero spontaneous curvature, i.e., the sum of the Willmore energy, lambda _1 times the area, and lambda _2 times the signed volume of an immersed closed surface without boundary in mathbb {R}^3. We show that in the case that lambda _1>1 and lambda _2=0, any immersion develops singularities in finite time under this flow. If lambda _1 >0 and lambda _2 > 0, embedded closed surfaces with energy less than 8π+min16πλ13/3λ22,8π\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal}\t\t\t\t\\usepackage{amsmath}\t\t\t\t\\usepackage{wasysym}\t\t\t\t\\usepackage{amsfonts}\t\t\t\t\\usepackage{amssymb}\t\t\t\t\\usepackage{amsbsy}\t\t\t\t\\usepackage{mathrsfs}\t\t\t\t\\usepackage{upgreek}\t\t\t\t\\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt}\t\t\t\t\\begin{document}$$\\begin{aligned} 8\\pi +\\min \\left\\{ \\left( 16 \\pi \\lambda _1^3\\right) \\bigg /\\left( 3\\lambda _2^2\\right) , 8\\pi \\right\\} \\end{aligned}$$\\end{document}and positive volume evolve singularities in finite time. If in this case the initial surface is a topological sphere and the initial energy is less than 8 pi , the flow shrinks to a round point in finite time. We furthermore discuss similar results for the case that lambda _2 is negative. These results strengthen the ones of McCoy and Wheeler (Commun Anal Geom 24(4):843–886, 2016). For lambda _1 >0 and lambda _2 ge 0, they showed that embedded closed spheres with positive volume and energy close to 4pi , i.e., close to the Willmore energy of a round sphere, converge to round points in finite time.
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