Alessandra Pluda (Universitat Regensburg) will speak in the geometry seminar on Tuesday 30 April, at 1.30pm in the Salle de Profs. Alessandra’s title is Motion by curvature of networks: analysis of singularities and “restarting” theorems and her abstract is below.
A regular network is a finite union of sufficiently smooth curves whose end points meet in triple junctions. We will present the state-of-the-art of the problem of the motion by curvature of a regular network of curves in the plane mainly focusing on singularity formation. Then we will discuss the need of a “restarting” theorem for networks with multiple junctions of order bigger than three and we will give an idea of a possible strategy to prove it. These results are in collaboration with Rafe Mazzeo (Stanford University), Mariel Saez (P. Universidad Catolica de Chile) and Jorge Lira (University of Fortaleza).