Heat flow, heat content and the isoparametric property
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Abstract
Let M be a Riemannian manifold and \(\Omega \) a compact domain of M with smooth boundary. We study the solution of the heat equation on \(\Omega \) having constant unit initial conditions and Dirichlet boundary conditions. The purpose of this paper is to study the geometry of domains for which, at any fixed value of time, the normal derivative of the solution (heat flow) is a constant function on the boundary. We express this fact by saying that such domains have the constant flow property. In constant curvature spaces known examples of such domains are given by geodesic balls and, more generally, by domains whose boundary is connected and isoparametric. The question is: are they all like that? This problem is the analogous (for the heat equation) of the classical Serrin’s problem for harmonic domains. In this paper we give an affirmative answer to the above question: in fact we prove more generally that, if a domain in an analytic Riemannian manifold has the constant flow property, then every component of its boundary is an isoparametric hypersurface. For space forms, we also relate the order of vanishing of the heat content with fixed boundary data with the constancy of the r-mean curvatures of the boundary and with the isoparametric property. Finally, we discuss the constant flow property in relation to other well-known overdetermined problems involving the Laplace operator, like the Serrin problem or the Schiffer problem.
Mathematics Subject Classification
58J50 35P15Notes
Acknowledgments
We wish to thank Sylvestre Gallot for his interest in this paper and for many enlightening discussions, and Stefano Capparelli for pointing out the role of orthogonal polynomials in the combinatorial part of the paper (Lemma 27). Finally, we are deeply grateful to the referee, who has done a great job in suggesting a number of remarks which really helped to improve the clarity of the exposition.
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