Rigidity of an overdetermined heat equation and minimal helicoids in space-forms

Abstract

Let $M$ be a Riemannian manifold and $\Omega$ a smooth domain of $M$. We study the following heat diffusion problem: assume that the initial temperature is equal to $1$, uniformly on $\Omega$, and is $0$ on its complement. Heat will then flow away from $\Omega$ to its complement, and we are interested in the temperature on the boundary of $\Omega$ at all positive times $t>0$. In particular we ask: are there domains for which the temperature at the boundary is a constant $c$, for all positive times $t$ and for all points of the boundary? If they exist, what can we say about their geometry? This is a typical example of overdetermined heat equation. It is readily seen that if $c$ exists it must be $\frac 12$, and domains with constant boundary temperature will be said to have the $\frac 12$-property. Previous work by \cite{MPS06} and \cite{CSU23} show that, on $\mathbb R^3$, the only such domains (up to congruences) have boundary which is a plane or (a bit surprisingly) the right helicoid. In this paper we first show that, in great generality, the boundary of a $\frac 12$-domain must be minimal; we then extend (with a different proof) the above classification from $\mathbb R^3$ to the other $3$-dimensional space-forms. We prove that, in $\mathbb S^3$, $\frac 12$-domains are bounded by a totally geodesic surface or the Clifford torus, and in the hyperbolic space $\mathbb H^3$ are bounded by a totally geodesic surface or by an (embedded) minimal hyperbolic helicoid. %(there is a one-parameter family of such surfaces) As a by-product, we extend (with a different proof) a result by Nitsche on uniformly dense domains from $\mathbb R^3$ to $3$-dimensional space-forms.