Geometric flows and space-periodic solitons on the light-cone

Abstract

This paper investigates curve flows on the light-cone in the 3-dimensional Minkowski space. We derive the Harnack inequality for the heat flow and present a detailed classification of space-periodic solitons for a third-order curvature flow. The nontrivial periodic solutions to this flow are expressed in terms of the Jacobi elliptic sine function. Additionally, the closed soliton solutions form a family of transcendental curves, denoted by ${\mathrm{x}}_{p,q}$, which are characterized by a rotation index $p$ and close after $q$ periods of their curvature functions. The ratio $p/q$ satisfies $p/q\in (\sqrt{2/3},1)$, where $p$ and $q$ are relatively prime positive integers. Guided by the classification process, we obtain the analytic solutions to a second-order nonlinear ordinary differential equation.