Paper · Aug 9, 2026

Well-posedness for the mean curvature flow on the half-space and on bounded domains

Ke Chen, Ruilin Hu, Quoc-Hung Nguyen

math.APWider flowsarXiv:2608.08901

As on arXiv

Abstract

We study graphical mean curvature flow in arbitrary codimension over the half-space and over smooth bounded domains, subject to homogeneous Dirichlet boundary conditions. At the scaling-critical Lipschitz regularity, we prove local well-posedness for initial graphs that can be approximated in by smooth profiles compatible with the boundary condition. Within this class, if the initial Lipschitz seminorm is sufficiently small, the corresponding solution is global; on a bounded domain, it also converges exponentially to the flat graph. Positive-time regularization is quantified by time-weighted Hölder estimates whose weighted quantities remain bounded as . The main analytic ingredient is a boundary Schauder theory for variable-coefficient parabolic systems. On the half-space, it combines coefficient freezing with parity extensions and boundary identities intrinsic to the graphical system. On curved domains, localization and boundary flattening lead to anisotropic estimates, from which normal derivatives are recovered recursively.

Submitted
Aug 9, 2026
Subjects
math.AP

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    Topics Homogeneous spaces, Long-time existence & convergence · Shared terms “Dirichlet”

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    Topics Long-time existence & convergence · Shared terms “bounded domain”, “half space”, “Dirichlet”

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    Topics Homogeneous spaces, Long-time existence & convergence, Boundaries & non-compact

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    Topics Homogeneous spaces, Long-time existence & convergence, Boundaries & non-compact

  6. Inverse mean curvature flow with outer obstacle

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    Topics Boundaries & non-compact · Shared terms “bounded domain”, “posedness”, “smooth bounded”

  7. Long time behavior of a class of non-homogeneous anisotropic fully nonlinear curvature flows

    Weimin Sheng and Jiazhuo YangWider flows

    Topics Homogeneous spaces, Long-time existence & convergence

  8. Level-set forced mean curvature flow with the Neumann boundary condition

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    Topics Homogeneous spaces, Boundaries & non-compact · Shared terms “boundary condition”, “Lipschitz”

Read around it

Background reading

The guides for the topics of this paper: what each idea is, why it matters, and the papers to read first.

In the guidebook

  1. 11A.13
    Homogeneous FlowsBook 11A · The Ricci Flow: Existence and Maximum Principles

    A computable laboratory: the flow on Thurston’s geometries.

  2. 6A.10
    Curve Shortening and the First Geometric FlowsBook 6A · The Heat Equation and Its Relatives

    Shrinking circles, grim reapers, neckpinches and Huisken’s monotonicity, seen in the plane.