Stationary isothermic surfaces in Euclidean 3-space

Abstract

Let $\Omega$ be a domain in $\mathbb R^3$ with $\partial\Omega = \partial\left(\mathbb R^3\setminus \overline{\Omega}\right)$, where $\partial\Omega$ is unbounded and connected, and let $u$ be the solution of the Cauchy problem for the heat equation $\partial_t u= \Delta u$ over $\mathbb R^3,$ where the initial data is the characteristic function of the set $\Omega^c = \mathbb R^3\setminus \Omega$. We show that, if there exists a stationary isothermic surface $\Gamma$ of $u$ with $\Gamma \cap \partial\Omega = \varnothing$, then both $\partial\Omega$ and $\Gamma$ must be either parallel planes or co-axial circular cylinders . This theorem completes the classification of stationary isothermic surfaces in the case that $\Gamma\cap\partial\Omega=\varnothing$ and $\partial\Omega$ is unbounded. To prove this result, we establish a similar theorem for {\it uniformly dense domains } in $\mathbb R^3$, a notion that was introduced by Magnanini, Prajapat \& Sakaguchi in \cite{MPS2006tams}. In the proof, we use methods from the theory of surfaces with constant mean curvature, combined with a careful analysis of certain asymptotic expansions and a surprising connection with the theory of transnormal functions.