Standard Planar Double Bubbles are Stable under Surface Diffusion Flow

Abstract

Although standard planar double bubbles are stable in the sense that the second variation of the perimeter functional is non-negative for all area-preserving perturbations the question arises whether they are dynamically stable. By presenting connections between these two concepts of stability for double bubbles, we prove that standard planar double bubbles are stable under the surface diffusion flow via the generalized principle of linearized stability in parabolic H\"older spaces.