Intrinsic Geometric Flows on Manifolds of Revolution

Abstract

An intrinsic geometric flow is an evolution of a Riemannian metric by a two-tensor. An extrinsic geometric flow is an evolution of an immersion of a manifold into Euclidean space. An extrinsic flow induces an evolution of a metric because any immersed manifold inherits a Riemannian metric from Euclidean space. In this paper we discuss the inverse problem of specifying an evolution of a metric and then seeking an extrinsic geometric flow which induces the given metric evolution. We limit our discussion to the case of manifolds that are rotationally symmetric and embeddable with codimension one. In this case, we reduce an intrinsic geometric flow to a plane curve evolution. In the specific cases we study, we are able to further simplify the evolution to an evolution of a function of one variable. We provide soliton equations and give proofs that some soliton metrics exist.