Convergence of thresholding energies for anisotropic mean curvature flow on inhomogeneous obstacle

Abstract

We extend the analysis by Esedo\={g}lu and Otto (2015) of thresholding energies for the celebrated multiphase Bence-Merriman-Osher algorithm for computing mean curvature flow of interfacial networks, to the case of differing space-dependent anisotropies. In particular, we address the special setting of an obstacle problem, where anisotropic particles move on an inhomogeneous substrate. By suitable modification of the surface energies we construct an approximate energy that uses a single convolution kernel and is monotone with respect to the convolution width. This allows us to prove that the approximate energies $\Gamma$-converge to their sharp interface counterpart.