Subsets of Grassmannians Preserved by Mean Curvature Flows

Abstract

Let $M={\Sigma }_1\times {\Sigma }_2$ be the product of two compact Riemannian manifolds of dimension $n\ge 2$ and two, respectively. Let $\Sigma$ be the graph of a smooth map $f:{\Sigma }_1\mapsto {\Sigma }_2$, then $\Sigma$ is an $n$-dimensional submanifold of $M$. Let $\mathfrak{G}$ be the Grassmannian bundle over $M$ whose fiber at each point is the set of all $n$-dimensional subspaces of the tangent space of $M$. The Gauss map $\gamma :\Sigma \mapsto \mathfrak{G}$ assigns to each point $x\in \Sigma$ the tangent space of $\Sigma$ at $x$. This article considers the mean curvature flow of $\Sigma$ in $M$. When ${\Sigma }_1$ and ${\Sigma }_2$ are of the same non-negative curvature, we show a sub-bundle $\mathfrak{S}$ of the Grassmannian bundle is preserved along the flow, i.e. if the Gauss map of the initial submanifold $\Sigma$ lies in $\mathfrak{S}$, then the Gauss map of ${\Sigma }_t$ at any later time $t$ remains in $\mathfrak{S}$. We also show that under this initial condition, the mean curvature flow remains a graph, exists for all time and converges to the graph of a constant map at infinity . As an application, we show that if $f$ is any map from $S^n$ to $S^2$ and if at each point, the restriction of $df$ to any two dimensional subspace is area decreasing, then $f$ is homotopic to a constant map.

submitted