On the Surface Diffusion Flow with Triple Junctions in Higher Space Dimensions

Abstract

We show short time existence for the evolution of triple junction clusters driven by the surface diffusion flow. On the triple line we use the boundary conditions derived by Garcke and Novick-Cohen as the singular limit of a Cahn-Hilliard equation with degenerated mobility. These conditions are concurrency of the triple junction, angle conditions between the hypersurfaces, continuity of the chemical potentials and a flux-balance. For the existence analysis we first write the geometric problem over a fixed reference surface and then use for the resulting analytic problem an approach in a parabolic Hölder setting.