Structure of Singular Sets Local to Cylindrical Singularities for Stationary Harmonic Maps and Mean Curvature Flows

In this paper we prove structure results for the singular sets of stationary harmonic maps and mean curvature flows local to particular singularities. The original work is contained in Chapter 5 and Chapter 8. Chapters 1-5 are concerned with energy minimising maps and stationary harmonic maps. Chapters 6-8 are concerned with mean curvature flows and Brakke flows. In the case of stationary harmonic maps we consider a singularity at which the spine dimension is maximal, and such that the weak tangent map is homotopically non-trivial, and has minimal density amongst singularities of maximal spine dimen- sion. Local to such a singularity we show the singular set is a bi-Hölder continuous homeomorphism of the unit disk of dimension equal to the maximal spine dimension. A weak tangent map is translation invariant along a subspace, and invariant under dilations, so it completely defined by its values on a sphere. Such a map is said to be homotopically non-trivial if the mapping of a sphere into some target manifold cannot be deformed by a homotopy to a constant map. For an n-dimensional mean curvature flow we consider a singularity at which we can find a shrinking cylinder as a tangent flow, that collapses on an (n−1)-dimensional plane. Local to such a singularity we show that all singularities have such a cylindrical tangent, or else have lower Gaussian density than that of the shrinking cylinder. The subset of cylindrical singularities can be shown to be contained in a finite union of parabolic (n − 1)-dimensional Lipschitz submanifolds. In the case that the mean curvature flow arises from elliptic regularisation we can show that all singularities local to a cylindrical singularity with (n − 1)-dimensional spine are either cylindrical singularities with (n − 1)-dimensional spine, or contained in a parabolic Hausdorff (n − 2)-dimensional set.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Cambridge

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• Wells-Day, Benjamin Michael

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Wickramasekera, Neshan

• harmonic maps
• mean curvature flows
• brakke flows
• singularities
• geometric measure theory

Licence

• https://apollo8-f-pro.lib.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/77b4ea8d-dfe1-4c9d-b395-7edf084b7d33/download
• https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

Language dc:language

en

DOI dc:identifier.doi

https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.37640

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/290409