Subsets of Grassmannians Preserved by Mean Curvature Flows

Abstract

Let $M=Σ_1\times Σ_2$ be the product of two compact Riemannian manifolds of dimension $n\geq 2 $ and two, respectively. Let $Σ$ be the graph of a smooth map $f:Σ_1\mapsto Σ_2$, then $Σ$ is an $n$-dimensional submanifold of $M$. Let ${\frak G}$ be the Grassmannian bundle over $M$ whose fiber at each point is the set of all $n$-dimensional subspaces of the tangent space of $M$. The Gauss map $γ:Σ\mapsto \frak{G} $ assigns to each point $x\in Σ$ the tangent space of $Σ$ at $x$. This article considers the mean curvature flow of $Σ$ in $M$. When $Σ_1$ and $Σ_2$ are of the same non-negative curvature, we show a sub-bundle $\frak{S}$ of the Grassmannian bundle is preserved along the flow, i.e. if the Gauss map of the initial submanifold $Σ$ lies in $\frak{S}$, then the Gauss map of $Σ_t$ at any later time $t$ remains in $\frak{S}$. We also show that under this initial condition, the mean curvature flow remains a graph, exists for all time and converges to the graph of a constant map at infinity . As an application, we show that if $f$ is any map from $S^n$ to $S^2$ and if at each point, the restriction of $df$ to any two dimensional subspace is area decreasing, then $f$ is homotopic to a constant map.