Flat flow solution to the mean curvature flow with volume constraint

Abstract

In this paper I will revisit the construction of a global weak solution to the volume preserving mean curvature flow via discrete minimizing movement scheme by Mugnai, Seis and Spadaro [L. Mugnai, C. Seis and E. Spadaro, Global solutions to the volume-preserving mean-curvature flow, Calc. Var. Partial Differential Equations 55 2016, 1, Article ID 18]. This method is based on the gradient flow approach due to Almgren, Taylor and Wang [F. Almgren, J. E. Taylor and L. Wang, Curvature-driven flows: a variational approach, SIAM J. Control Optim. 31 1993, 2, 387–438] and Luckhaus and Sturzenhecker [S. Luckhaus and T. Sturzenhecker, Implicit time discretization for the mean curvature flow equation, Calc. Var. Partial Differential Equations 3 1995, 2, 253–271] and my aim is to replace the volume penalization with the volume constraint directly in the discrete scheme, which from practical point of view is perhaps more natural. A technical novelty is the proof of the density estimate which is based on second variation argument.