Mean curvature self-shrinkers of high genus: Non-compact examples

TL;DR

This paper constructs the first known non-compact, high-genus self-shrinking hypersurfaces under mean curvature flow, revealing complex asymptotic behavior and instability phenomena.

Contribution

It provides the first rigorous construction of high-genus, non-compact self-shrinkers with detailed asymptotic analysis and novel PDE techniques.

Findings

Existence of high-genus self-shrinkers for large genus

Asymptotic to cones over periodic graphs on the sphere

Revealed instability phenomena with symmetry-breaking asymptotics

Abstract

We give the first rigorous construction of complete, embedded self-shrinking hypersurfaces under mean curvature flow, since Angenent's torus in 1989. The surfaces exist for any sufficiently large prescribed genus $g$, and are non-compact with one end. Each has $4g+4$ symmetries and comes from desingularizing the intersection of the plane and sphere through a great circle, a configuration with very high symmetry. Each is at infinity asymptotic to the cone in $\mathbb{R}^3$ over a $2\pi/(g+1)$-periodic graph on an equator of the unit sphere $\mathbb{S}^2\subseteq\mathbb{R}^3$, with the shape of a periodically "wobbling sheet". This is a dramatic instability phenomenon, with changes of asymptotics that break much more symmetry than seen in minimal surface constructions. The core of the proof is a detailed understanding of the linearized problem in a setting with severely unbounded geometry, leading to special PDEs of Ornstein-Uhlenbeck type with fast growth on coefficients of the gradient terms. This involves identifying new, adequate weighted H\"older spaces of asymptotically conical functions in which the operators invert, via a Liouville-type result with precise asymptotics.