Collapsed translating solitons with planar wings

Abstract

We study complete embedded translating solitons in R^3 with finite genus and finite entropy. We prove that such collapsed translators whose wings are all of planar type (in a weak topological sense) must be vertical flat planes. In particular, this implies the non-existence result for gluing and doubling constructions involving planes that was conjectured in (14) and announced in (9) as an application of the authors' techniques, under weaker assumptions than previous rigidity results by Khan and Lynch-Tinaglia in (17,19,20). A key ingredient is a sharp new a priori decay estimate in the exterior problem for the horizontal graphical translator equation, showing that bounded solutions to the nonlinear equation, and their gradients, are controlled by multiples of the Green's function of the linear drift Laplacian, regardless of the size of the given L^\infty data. Combined with a graphical description of the infinite ends and the Neves-Tian flux identity, this yields the main rigidity result. As another application, we obtain a full classification of collapsed embedded finite-genus translators of entropy lambda < 3.

arXiv comment36 pages, 2 figures