Speaker:

Felix Otto, Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences, Leipzig, Germany

Abstract:

The formal gradient flow structure of the evolution of a surface by its mean curvature motivated Almgren, Taylor and Wang to formulate a time discretization that comes as a sequence of variational problems. Luckhaus and Sturzenhecker gave a (conditional) convergence proof.  

The computationally efficient and very popular thresholding scheme by Osher et al. can actually be interpreted as such a “minimizing movements” scheme. This naturally extends to the case of multiple phases, which models the aging of a grain arrangement in a polycrystalline material. It also allows for a (conditional) convergence proof based on De Giorgi’s ideas for gradient flows in metric spaces. This is joint work with T. Laux and with S. Esedoglu. 

Tea, coffee and biscuits will be available at 15:00 in the Maths Common Room.