Heat flow, heat content and the isoparametric property

TL;DR

This paper characterizes domains with constant heat flow on their boundary in Riemannian manifolds, showing they must have isoparametric boundary components, and relates this property to other overdetermined problems and geometric curvatures.

Contribution

It proves that domains with constant heat flow in analytic Riemannian manifolds have isoparametric boundary components, extending known results in space forms and connecting to overdetermined problems.

Findings

Domains with constant heat flow have isoparametric boundary components.

In space forms, heat content relates to boundary curvatures and isoparametric property.

The constant flow property links to classical overdetermined problems like Serrin's.

Abstract

Let $M$ be a Riemannian manifold and $\Omega$ a compact domain of $M$ with smooth boundary. We study the solution of the heat equation on $\Omega$ having constant unit initial conditions and Dirichlet boundary conditions. The purpose of this paper is to study the geometry of domains for which, at any fixed value of time, the normal derivative of the solution (heat flow) is a constant function on the boundary. We express this fact by saying that such domains have the constant flow property. In constant curvature spaces known examples of such domains are given by geodesic balls and, more generally, by domains whose boundary is connected and isoparametric. The question is: are they all like that? In this paper we give an affirmative answer to this question: in fact we prove more generally that, if a domain in an analytic Riemannian manifold has the constant flow property, then every component of its boundary is an isoparametric hypersurface. For space forms, we also relate the order of vanishing of the heat content with fixed boundary data with the constancy of the $r$-mean curvatures of the boundary and with the isoparametric property. Finally, we discuss the constant flow property in relation to other well-known overdetermined problems involving the Laplace operator, like the Serrin problem or the Schiffer problem.