Spectral quantization for ancient asymptotically cylindrical flows

Abstract

We study ancient mean curvature flows in $\mathbb{R}^{n+1}$ whose tangent flow at $-\infty$ is a shrinking cylinder $\mathbb{R}^{k}\times S^{n-k}(\sqrt{2(n-k)|t|})$, where $1\leq k\leq n-1$. We prove that the cylindrical profile function $u$ of these flows have the asymptotics $u(y,\omega,\tau)= (y^\top Qy -2\textrm{tr}(Q))/|\tau| + o(|\tau|^{-1})$ as $\tau\to -\infty$, where the cylindrical matrix $Q$ is a constant symmetric $k\times k$ matrix whose eigenvalues are quantized to be either 0 or $-\frac{\sqrt{2(n-k)}}{4}$. Compared with the bubble-sheet quantization theorem in $\mathbb{R}^{4}$ obtained by Haslhofer and the first author, this theorem has full generality in the sense of removing noncollapsing condition and being valid for all dimensions. In addition, we establish symmetry improvement theorem which generalizes the corresponding results of Brendle-Choi and the second author to all dimensions. Finally, we give some geometric applications of the two theorems. In particular, we obtain the asymptotics, compactness and $\textrm{O}(n-k+1)$ symmetry of $k$-ovals in $\mathbb{R}^{n+1}$ which are ancient noncollapsed flows in $\mathbb{R}^{n+1}$ satisfying full rank condition that $\textrm{rk}(Q)=k$, and we also obtain the classification of ancient noncollapsed flows in $\mathbb{R}^{n+1}$ satisfying vanishing rank condition that $\textrm{rk}(Q)=0$.