Evolving pinched submanifolds of the sphere by mean curvature flow

Abstract

AbstractIn this paper, we prove convergence of the high codimension mean curvature flow in the sphere to either a round point or a totally geodesic sphere assuming a pinching condition between the norm squared of the second fundamental form and the norm squared of the mean curvature and the background curvature of the sphere. We show that this pinching is sharp for dimension $$n\ge 4$$ n ≥ 4 but is not sharp for dimension $$n=2,3$$ n = 2 , 3 . For dimension $$n=2$$ n = 2 and codimension 2, we consider an alternative pinching condition which includes the normal curvature of the normal bundle. Finally, we sharpen the Chern–do Carmo–Kobayashi curvature condition for surfaces in the four sphere - this curvature condition is sharp for minimal surfaces and we conjecture it to be sharp for curvature flows in the sphere.