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# Separable balls around the maximally mixed multipartite quantum states

## I Introduction

Entanglement is an important quantum resource, useful in quantum computation, cryptography, and communication protocols. Entangled quantum states are those that cannot be expressed as a mixture of product states. That is, if $`\rho `$ is an entangled state of $`m`$ systems (an “$`m`$-partite state”), there is no way to choose probabilities $`p_i`$ and states $`\rho _i^1,\mathrm{},\rho _i^m`$ for systems $`1`$ through $`m`$, such that

$`\rho ={\displaystyle \underset{i}{}}p_i\rho _i^1\mathrm{}\rho _i^m.`$ (1)
In this paper, we provide a simple geometric condition sufficient to guarantee separability (non-entanglement) of an $`m`$-partite state: that the state is proportional to the identity matrix plus a Hermitian perturbation $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ whose Frobenius norm ($`2`$-norm) is no greater than $`2^{(m/21)}`$. This is exponentially better than the best previous bounds we are aware of Braunstein et al. (1999); Rungta et al. (2001). It can be used to obtain balls of normalized separable states. Because the set of separable (unentangled) density matrices is convex, and the size of the largest ball that fits inside it (as well as the smallest ball that covers it) is important to complexity-theoretic questions involving convex sets, we expect the result to have applications in complexity questions about entanglement, such as the complexity of deciding whether or not a multipartite state is entangled. Equally importantly, it can help determine whether or not entanglement is present in interesting theoretical and experimental situations. For example, though the utility of the criterion is emphatically not restricted to such states, it gives us a bound on the “polarization” $`ϵ`$ below which “pseudopure” states of the form $`(1ϵ)I/d+ϵ\pi `$, with $`\pi `$ pure, $`I`$ the identity operator on a multipartite state-space of overall dimension $`d`$ are separable. Applied to a standard nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) quantum information processing (QIP) protocol, pseudopure-state liquid NMR, at 300 Kelvin and a 11 Tesla external field, it tells us that unless we have 23 or more nuclear-spin qubits, only separable states can be produced (compared to 13 qubits using the bound in Braunstein et al. (1999)).

The methods of Braunstein et al. (1999); Rungta et al. (2001) are very different from ours: they expand the density matrix in an overcomplete basis of pure states, and find conditions guaranteeing positivity of all coefficients of the expansion, thus giving an explicit decomposition of the form (1). In contrast, the methods we use have a nonconstructive flavor: although they establish that any $`m`$-partite (unnormalized) density matrix within a distance $`1/2^{(m/21)}`$ is separable, they do not provide an explicit “separable representation” (1) of it. Our methods use general concepts of matrix theory and convex analysis in terms of which the problem is naturally formulated, and involve only short and elementary calculations. This paper is a natural sequel to Gurvits and Barnum (2002), in the sense that almost the same mathematics is used. The main (though quite simple) novelty here is a generalization of separability, so-called $`(C_1C_2\mathrm{}C_m)`$-separability , where $`C_i`$ are matrix cones (see Definition 2 below). This generalization arises naturally in extending the bipartite result of Gurvits and Barnum (2002) to $`m`$-partite systems with $`m3`$. A reader comfortable with the technique used in Gurvits and Barnum (2002) should have no extra problems in understanding this paper.

## II Notation and mathematical preliminaries

The mathematical notion of a “regular” positive cone (which we will just call cone) is basic in quantum information science, especially in the study of entanglement. This is so because the unnormalized quantum states, the unnormalized separable states of a multipartite quantum system, the completely positive maps, the positive maps, and many other sets of interest form such cones. (Appropriate normalization-like conditions, such as unit trace for states, or trace-preservation or trace-nonincrease for maps, are usually just additional linear equalities or inequalities.) In this section, we review regular positive cones and related notions; background and preliminaries specific to the separable cones (of unentangled states) appear at the beginning of the next section.

###### Definition 1

A positive cone is a subset $`K`$ of a real vector space $`V`$ closed under multiplication by positive scalars. It is called regular if it is (a) convex (equivalently, closed under addition: $`K+K=K`$), (b) generating ($`KK=V`$, equivalently $`K`$ linearly generates $`V`$,) (c) pointed ($`KK=\mathrm{}`$, so that it contains no nonnull subspace of $`V`$), and (d) topologically closed (in the Euclidean metric topology, for finite dimension).

Such a positive cone induces a partial order $`_K`$ on $`V`$, defined by $`x_Ky:=xyK`$. It is “linear-compatible”: inequalities can be added, and multiplied by positive scalars. A set $`S`$ is said to generate a cone $`K`$ if $`K`$ is the set of positive linear combinations of elements of $`S`$. The topological closure condition guarantees that such a cone is generated (via addition) by its extreme rays. These are sets $`R_x:=\{\lambda x:\lambda 0\}`$ such that no $`yR_x`$ can be written as a convex combination of elements of $`C`$ that are not in $`R_x`$. We will not make much use of closure and extremality, but at some points we use the fact that positive semidefinite (PSD) matrices can be written as convex combinations of rank-one PSD matrices (these being the members of the extreme rays of the cone of PSD matrices).

Duality is often a useful tool when dealing with cones. The dual vector space $`V^{}`$ for real $`V`$ is the space of linear functions (“functionals”) from $`V`$ to $`𝐑`$; the dual cone $`C^{}V^{}`$ of the cone $`CV`$ is the set of such linear functionals which are nonnegative on $`C`$. For finite dimensional vector spaces, $`V^{}`$ is isomorphic to $`V`$ as a vector space (they have the same dimension). However, this isomorphism is not canonical; any nonsingular linear maps from $`V`$ onto $`V^{}`$ does the job. For a slight improvement in clarity below, for $`\alpha V^{}`$, $`xV`$, we write the value of $`\alpha `$ on $`x`$ as $`\alpha [x]`$, rather than $`\alpha (x)`$.

We define the adjoint $`\varphi ^{}:V_2^{}V_1^{}`$ of a linear map $`\varphi :V_1V_2`$ via

$`\varphi ^{}(\alpha )[x]=\alpha [\varphi (x)],`$ (2)
for all $`\alpha V^{},xV`$.

An inner product, written $`,`$, on $`V`$ distinguishes a particular isomorphism $`\zeta `$ between $`V`$ and $`V^{}`$, defined by requiring that $`\zeta (x)V^{}`$ satisfy $`\zeta (x)[y]=x,y`$, for all $`yV`$. From now on, we will assume such a choice of inner product (there will be a natural choice in our applications), and canonically identify $`V`$ with $`V^{}`$ via $`\zeta `$. Thus we will view the dual cone $`C^{}`$ as $`\{yV:y,x0,xC\}`$, and the adjoint of $`\varphi :V_1V_2`$ as $`\varphi ^{}:V_2V_1`$ defined via

$`B,\varphi (A)=\varphi ^{}(B),A,`$ (3)
for all $`AV_1,BV_2`$.

We say a linear map $`\varphi :V_1V_2`$ is $`C_1`$-to-$`C_2`$ positive, for cones $`C_1V_1`$, $`C_2V_2`$, if $`\varphi (C_1)C_2`$. Under either definition of $`\varphi ^{}`$, the following proposition is easily (but instructively) verified.

###### Proposition 1

If $`\varphi (C_1)C_2`$ then $`\varphi ^{}(C_2^{})C_1^{}`$.

The positive semidefinite cone $`PSD(d)`$ in the real linear space of Hermitian $`d\times d`$ matrices, is the set of matrices $`M`$ such that $`x^{}Mx0`$ for all $`x𝐂^d`$. It is self-dual; if we use the trace inner product $`X,Y:=\mathrm{tr}XY`$ to identify $`V^{}`$ with $`V`$, it is not only isomorphic to, but equal to, its dual. We will denote by “$``$” the partial order induced by this cone, and often write $`M0`$ for the equivalent $`MPSD(d)`$.

We will have several occasions to use the following proposition, which follows from the fact that for normal (including Hermitian) matrices, $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{\mathrm{}}`$ is the largest modulus of an eigenvalue of $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$).

###### Proposition 2

Let $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ be Hermitian. Then $`I+\mathrm{\Delta }0`$ is equivalent to $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{\mathrm{}}1`$.

## III Separable cones

Let us consider an $`m`$-partite unnormalized density matrix (i.e. just positive semidefinite)

$$\rho :H_1H_2\mathrm{}H_mH_1H_2\mathrm{}H_m$$

Let $`dim(H_i)=d_i,1im`$. Then any such

$$\rho =\{\rho (i_1,i_2,\mathrm{},i_m;j_1,j_2,\mathrm{},j_m)\},1i_k,j_kd_k;1km\}.$$

Let us block-partition $`\rho `$ with respect to the first index :

$$\rho :=\left(\begin{array}{cccc}\rho ^{1,1}& \rho ^{1,2}& \mathrm{}& \rho ^{1,d_1}\\ \rho ^{2,1}& \rho ^{1,2}& \mathrm{}& \rho ^{2,d_1}\\ \mathrm{}& \mathrm{}& \mathrm{}& \mathrm{}\\ \rho ^{d_1,1}& \rho ^{d_1,2}& \mathrm{}& \rho ^{d_1,d_1}\end{array}\right).$$
(4)
where the blocks

$$\rho ^{i,j}:H_2\mathrm{}H_mH_2\mathrm{}H_m$$

and

$$\rho ^{i,j}=\{\rho (i,i_2,\mathrm{},i_m;j,j_2,\mathrm{},j_m\},1i_k,j_kd_k;2km\}.$$

###### Definition 2

The linear space of $`N\times N`$ complex matrices is denoted $`M(N)`$, the linear space over the reals of $`N\times N`$ real matrices is denoted $`Mat(N)`$ , the linear space of real symmetric $`N\times N`$ matrices is denoted $`RSym(N)`$, the linear space over reals of $`N\times N`$ complex hermitian matrices is denoted as $`Her(N)`$. The space of complex block matrices, $`K`$ blocks by $`K`$ blocks, with blocks in $`M(N)`$, is denoted $`Block(K,N)`$
Consider cones $`C_iM(d_i),1im`$. A matrix

$$\rho :H_1H_2\mathrm{}H_mH_1H_2\mathrm{}H_m$$

(i.e. $`\rho M(d_1d_2\mathrm{}d_m)`$ ) is called $`(C_1C_2\mathrm{}C_m)`$-separable if it belongs to the cone generated by the set $`\{A_1A_2\mathrm{}A_m:A_iC_i,1im\}`$ .

This is trivially equivalent to the recursive definition: $`Sep(C_1,C_2,\mathrm{},C_m)`$ is the cone generated by the pairs $`A_1B`$ with $`A_iC_1,BSep(C_2,\mathrm{},C_m)`$.

Examples: 1. Let for all $`1im`$ the cone $`C_i`$ be the cone of positive semidefinite matrices, denoted by $`PSD(d_i)`$. In this case the definition of $`(C_1C_2\mathrm{}C_m)`$-separability is equivalent to the standard notion of separability of multiparty unnormalized density matrices. We will denote the corresponding cone of separable multiparty unnormalized density matrices as $`Sep(d_1,d_2,\mathrm{},d_m)`$.
2. Let for all $`1im`$ the cone $`C_i`$ be the cone of positive semidefinite matrices with real entries. We call the the corresponding cone the cone of real-separable multiparty density matrices and denote it by $`RSep(d_1,d_2,\mathrm{},d_m)`$.

We now recursively define a subspace $`RLin(d_1,\mathrm{},d_m),`$ which we show is the minimal linear subspace (over the reals) of the symmetric matrices $`RSym(d_1,\mathrm{},d_m)`$ that contains the real separable cone $`RSep(d_1,\mathrm{},d_m)`$.

###### Definition 3

$`\rho RLin(d_1,d_2,\mathrm{},d_m)`$ iff in the block-partition 4, $`\rho ^{i,j}RLin(d_2,\mathrm{},d_m)`$ and $`\rho ^{i,j}=\rho ^{j,i}(1i,jd_1)`$; RLin(d) = RSym(d).

It is easy to prove that $`\rho :H_1H_2\mathrm{}H_mH_1H_2\mathrm{}H_m`$ is real-separable iff $`\rho `$ is separable and $`\rho RLin(d_1,d_2,\mathrm{},d_m)`$. In fact, we will show

###### Proposition 3

$`RLin(d_1,d_2,\mathrm{},d_m)`$ is the minimal linear subspace (over the reals) of $`RSym(d_1d_2\mathrm{}d_m)`$ which contains $`RSep(d_1,d_2,\mathrm{},d_m)`$.

Proof: It is clear that $`RLin(d_1\mathrm{}.d_m)`$ is a subspace of (“$``$”) $`RSym(d_1\mathrm{}d_m)`$. To be explicit, symmetry means $`\rho (i_1,\mathrm{},i_m,j_1,\mathrm{},j_m)=\rho (j_1,\mathrm{},j_m,i_1,\mathrm{},i_m)`$; this follows from the definition of $`RLin`$ and $`RLin(d_2\mathrm{}d_m)`$’s being a subspace of $`RSym(d_2,\mathrm{},d_m)`$. That establishes our induction step; the base case $`RLin(d_m)=RSym(d_m)`$ clearly also holds.

Suppose $`XRSep(d_1,\mathrm{},d_{m1})`$. That is, $`X=_kA_kB_k`$, $`A_kRSep(d_1,\mathrm{},d_{m1}),B_kRSym(d_m)`$. By the induction hypothesis, $`A_kRLin(d_1,\mathrm{},d_{m1})`$. Block-partitioning with respect to the second system,

$`X^{ij}={\displaystyle \underset{k}{}}B_k(i,j)A_k={\displaystyle \underset{k}{}}B_k(j,i)A_k=X^{ji},`$ (5)
These blocks are in $`RLin(d_1\mathrm{}d_{m1})`$ because $`A_k`$ are; consequently $`XRLin(d_1,\mathrm{},d_m)`$. The base case is trivial: $`RSep(d_1)(RSep(d_1)RLin(d_1))`$ holds with equality because $`RSep(d_1)PSD(d_1)`$ and $`RLin(d_1)=RSym(d_1)`$.

For the opposite direction, let $`XRLin(d_1,\mathrm{}d_m),Sep(d_1,\mathrm{},d_m)`$. By separability,

$`X={\displaystyle \underset{k}{}}A_kB_k\mathrm{}Z_k,`$ (6)
where $`A_kPSD(d_1),B_kPSD(d_2),Z_kPSD(d_m)`$ (and no restriction to $`m=26`$ is intended!). Let $`A_k=A_k^1+iA_k^2`$ with $`A_k^1`$ real symmetric, $`A_k^2`$ real skew-symmetric, and similarly for $`B`$. Substituting these in (6) and keeping only terms with an even number of imaginary factors (since $`XRLin`$), and block-partitioning the matrix according to the first subsystem, each block has the form:

$`{\displaystyle \underset{k}{}}A_k^1(i,j)R_k+{\displaystyle \underset{k}{}}A_k^2(i,j)S_k,`$ (7)
Thus $`X=X_1+X_2`$, where the first term is block-symmetric, the second block-skew-symmetric. This second term must therefore be zero. By the recursive definition of $`RLin`$ (and $`Sep`$) we have that, for each fixed value of $`i,j`$, $`X^{ij}`$ must be block-symmetric when partitioned according to the second (“B”) system. This block is

$`{\displaystyle \underset{k}{}}A_k^1(i,j)B_k^1(m,n)C^k`$ $``$ $`\mathrm{}Z^k`$
$`+{\displaystyle \underset{k}{}}A_k^1(i,j)B_k^2(m,n)C^k`$ $``$ $`\mathrm{}Z^k`$ (8)
and again only the first component is nonzero. Proceeding thus through all the subsystems, all terms with a skew-symmetric factor must be zero and we have:

$`X=A_k^1B_k^1\mathrm{}Z_k^1,`$ (9)
with each of $`A_k,B_k,\mathrm{}Z_k`$ real symmetric and positive semidefinite, i.e. $`XRSep`$.

The next lemma gives a simple but very useful criterion for $`PSD(d_1)C(d_2)`$-separability for any cone $`C(d_2)`$ of Hermitian matrices. It is a mild generalization of the necessary and sufficient criterion (cf. Woronowicz (1976), Horodecki et al. (1996)) for ordinary ($`C(d_2)=PSD(d_2)`$) bipartite separability, that every positive linear map, applied to one subsystem of the bipartite system (i.e. to every block of its block density matrix) gives a positive semidefinite matrix.

###### Definition 4

A linear operator $`\varphi :M(d_2)M(N)`$ is called $`C(d_2)`$-positive if $`\varphi (C(d_2))PSD(N)`$. If $`X`$ is a block matrix as in (4), $`X_{i,j}M(d_2)`$ and $`\varphi :M(d_2)M(N)`$ is a linear operator then we define

$$\stackrel{~}{\varphi }(X):=\left(\begin{array}{cccc}\varphi (X^{1,1})& \varphi (X^{1,2})& \mathrm{}& \varphi (X^{1,d_1})\\ \varphi (X^{2,1})& \varphi (X^{2,2})& \mathrm{}& \varphi (X^{2,d_1})\\ \mathrm{}& \mathrm{}& \mathrm{}& \mathrm{}\\ \varphi (X^{d_1,1})& \varphi (X^{d_1,2})& \mathrm{}& \varphi (X^{d_1,d_1})\end{array}\right).$$
(10)
###### Lemma 1

Suppose that the cone $`C(d_2)Her(d_2)M(d_2)`$ . Then $`X`$ is $`PSD(d_1)C(d_2)`$-separable iff $`\stackrel{~}{\varphi }(X)0`$ (i.e. is positive semidefinite) for all $`C(d_2)`$-positive linear operators $`\varphi :M(d_2)M(d_1)`$.

The proof uses the following proposition, which generalizes the duality between positive linear maps and separable states.

###### Proposition 4

For Hermitian matrices $`MBlock(d_1,d_2)`$, the following are equivalent:
1. $`\mathrm{tr}MZ0`$ for all $`PSD(d_1)C(d_2)`$-separable matrices $`Z`$.
2. $`M^{ij}=\chi (e_ie_j^{})`$ for some $`\chi `$ such that $`\chi (PSD(d_1))C(d_2)^{}`$.

Proof of Proposition 4 Item 1 of the proposition is equivalent to the same statement with $`Z`$ of the form $`xx^{}Y`$, with $`xx^{}`$ a rank-one matrix in $`PSD(d_1)`$ and $`YC(d_2)`$. This is equivalent to:

$`{\displaystyle \underset{ij}{}}x_ix_j^{}\mathrm{tr}(M^{ij}Y)=\mathrm{tr}{\displaystyle \underset{ij}{}}x_ix_j^{}M^{ij}Y0.`$ (11)
Since this holds for any $`YC(d_2)`$, this says $`_ix_ix_j^{}M^{ij}C(d_2)^{}`$. Define a linear map $`T_M:M(d_1)M(d_2)`$ via $`T_M(e_ie_j^{})=M^{ij}`$. Then for any $`x𝐂^{d_1}`$, $`T(xx^{})=_{ij}x_ix_j^{}T_M(e_ie_j^{})=_{ij}x_ix_j^{}M^{ij}`$, which we have just shown is in $`C(d_2)^{}`$. Since $`xx^{}`$ generate $`PSD(d_1)`$, this is equivalent to saying $`T_M`$ takes $`PSD(d_1)`$ into $`C(d_2)^{}`$, so $`T_m`$ is the desired $`\chi `$. The other direction ($`21`$) is similar (most of the steps above were equivalences).

We remark that essentially the same argument establishes a similar statement for arbitrary pairs of cones of Hermitian matrices, in which $`PSD(d_1)`$ is replaced by a cone $`C(d_1)`$ in item 1, and by $`C(d_1)^{}`$ in item 2.

Proof of Lemma 1: “Only if” is trivial: $`PSD(d_1)C(d_2)`$-separability of $`X`$ means $`X=_iA_iB_i`$, with $`A_iPSD(d_1),B_iC(d_2)`$, hence $`\stackrel{~}{\varphi }(X)=_iA_i\varphi (B_i)`$; since we assumed $`\varphi (C(d_2))PSD(d_1)`$, we have $`\varphi (B_i)PSD(d_1)`$, so $`\stackrel{~}{\varphi }(X)Sep(d_1,d_1)`$.

For “if,” note that $`\stackrel{~}{\varphi }(X)0`$ says that for any positive semidefinite $`BBlock(N,K)`$,

$`{\displaystyle \underset{ij}{}}\mathrm{tr}B^{ij}\varphi (X^{ij})0.`$ (12)
By the definition of dual cone (and the self-duality of $`PSD(d_1)`$) it is easily seen that $`\varphi ^{}(PSD(d_1))C(d_2)^{}`$. Now, (12) is equivalent to

$`{\displaystyle \underset{ij}{}}\mathrm{tr}\varphi ^{}(B^{ij})X^{ij}=\mathrm{tr}\stackrel{~}{\varphi ^{}}(B)X0.`$ (13)
Letting $`B^{ij}=e_ie_j^{}`$, so $`B`$ is the block matrix of a positive semidefinite rank-one state (specifically, the unnormalized maximally entangled state $`xx^{}`$ with $`x=_ie_ie_i`$), we have that the matrix $`\stackrel{~}{\varphi ^{}}(B)`$ satisfies condition $`2`$ of the Proposition; as $`\varphi `$ ranges over all $`PSD(d_1)`$-to-$`C(d_2)^{}`$-positive maps, $`\stackrel{~}{\varphi ^{}}(B)`$ ranges over all such matrices so by Proposition 4 $`X`$ is $`PSD(d_1)C(d_2)`$-separable.

The next proposition will allow us to extend the (exact) bipartite result from Gurvits and Barnum (2002) to multiparty systems. The bipartite result was that everything in the ball $`B(N,1):=\{I+\mathrm{\Delta }:\mathrm{\Delta }_21\}`$ of size $`1`$ in Frobenius norm around the identity operator is separable; therefore, so is everything in the cone, which we call $`G(d_1d_2,1)`$, generated by that ball, for a bipartite system with subsytems of dimensions $`d_1,d_2`$. We define a slight generalization of this cone:

###### Definition 5

Let $`G(N,a)Her(N)M(N)`$ be the cone generated by hermitian $`N\times N`$ matrices of the form $`\{I+\mathrm{\Delta }:||\mathrm{\Delta }||_2=:(tr(\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Delta }^{})^{\frac{1}{2}}a\}`$.

A sufficient condition for tripartite separability of $`X`$ is clearly that it belong to the cone generated by $`A_iZ_i`$, where $`A_iPSD(d_1)`$ and $`Z_iG(d_2d_3,1)`$; this can be used to derive a tripartite sufficient condition for separability in terms of Frobenius norm. Letting this tripartite 2-norm ball generate a cone of separable tripartite states, similar reasoning gives a ball of 4-partite states, and so on. The key to the induction step is the following proposition.

###### Proposition 5

If $`\varphi :M(N)M(K)`$ is a $`G(N,a)`$-positive linear operator (i.e. $`\varphi (X)0`$ for all $`XG(N,a)`$ and $`\varphi (I)=IM(K)`$ then

1. $`\varphi (X)_{\mathrm{}}a^1X_2`$ for all hermitian $`XM(N)`$.
2. $`\varphi (Y)_{\mathrm{}}a^1\sqrt{2}Y_2`$ for all $`YM(N)`$.

Proof: All $`G(N,a)`$-positive $`\varphi `$ satisfy $`\varphi (I+\mathrm{\Delta })0`$ for all $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ such that $`\mathrm{\Delta }_2a`$, which when $`\varphi (I)=I`$ gives $`I+\varphi (\mathrm{\Delta })0`$; by Proposition 2 this is equivalent to $`\varphi (\mathrm{\Delta })_{\mathrm{}}1`$, establishing item 1. Item 2. uses item 1 and the following: If a linear operator $`\varphi :M(N)M(K)`$ satisfies $`\varphi (Her(N))Her(K)`$ and $`\varphi (Z)_{\mathrm{}}X_2`$ for all hermitian $`ZM(N)`$ then $`\varphi (Y)_{\mathrm{}}\sqrt{2}Y_2`$ for all $`YM(N)`$.

To show this, let $`Y=A+iB`$ with $`A,B`$ Hermitian. Now, $`\varphi (Y)=\varphi (A)+i\varphi (B)`$, so $`\varphi (Y)_{\mathrm{}}\varphi (A)_{\mathrm{}}+\varphi (B)_{\mathrm{}}`$. This is less than or equal to $`A_2+B_2`$ by assumption ($`A,B`$ being Hermitian). The conclusion follows by the square root of the elementary inequality $`(x+y)^22(x^2+y^2)`$ (obtained from $`2xyx^2+y^2`$, which comes from $`(xy)^20`$).

The following example shows that the extra $`\sqrt{2}`$ factor is the best possible in this statement.

Consider $`\varphi :M(2)M(2)`$, $`\varphi (X)=X(1,1)A_1+X(2,2)A_2`$; where $`A_1,A_2`$ are real symmetric anticommuting unitary matrices:

$$A_1=\left(\begin{array}{cc}1& 0\\ 0& 1\end{array}\right),$$

$$A_2=\left(\begin{array}{cc}0& 1\\ 1& 0\end{array}\right).$$

Notice that for real $`a,b`$ we have that $`aA_1+bA_2=(a^2+b^2)^{\frac{1}{2}}U`$ for some real symmetric unitary $`U`$. Thus $`\varphi (Her(2))Her(2)`$ and $`\varphi (Z)_{\mathrm{}}Z_2`$ for all hermitian $`ZM(2)`$. Consider the following (nonhermitian) matrix :

$$Y=\left(\begin{array}{cc}1& 0\\ 0& i\end{array}\right).$$

Then $`Y_2^2=2`$ and $`\varphi (Y)_{\mathrm{}}^2=\varphi (Y)_2^2=4`$, since $`Det(\varphi (Y))=0`$.

Problem:  Is the extra $`\sqrt{2}`$ factor still the best possible if, additionally, $`\varphi (I)=I`$?

Proposition 2 of Gurvits and Barnum (2002) is a similar contraction result with constant $`1`$ rather than $`\sqrt{2}`$ on all matrices, not just Hermitian ones, for the usual positive maps; the proofs used there do not work for the different notion of positivity used here.

Now everything is ready for our attack on multipartite separability.

###### Theorem 1

Let $`H_1,H_2`$ have dimensions $`n_1,n_2`$. If an unnormalized density matrix $`\rho :H_1H_2H_1H_2`$ satisfies the inequality $`\rho I_2a/\sqrt{2}`$ then it is $`PSD(n_1)G(n_2,a)`$-separable.

Proof:

Let $`\rho =I+\mathrm{\Delta }`$ $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ Hermitian; by Lemma $`1`$, we are looking for a bound on $`\mathrm{\Delta }_2`$ that ensures, for any $`G(n_2,a)`$-to-$`PSD(n_1)`$-positive linear operator, that $`\stackrel{~}{\varphi }(I+\mathrm{\Delta })0`$. $`\stackrel{~}{\varphi }(I)=I`$, so $`\stackrel{~}{\varphi }(I+\mathrm{\Delta })=I+\stackrel{~}{\varphi }(\mathrm{\Delta })`$; $`\stackrel{~}{\varphi }(\mathrm{\Delta })_{\mathrm{}}1`$ will ensure this (cf. Proposition 2). The argument establishing that $`\stackrel{~}{\varphi }(\mathrm{\Delta })_{\mathrm{}}1`$ is essentially identical to the proof of the main theorem of Gurvits and Barnum (2002), except that because $`\varphi `$ is not an ordinary positive map we must use the weaker contraction bound of Proposition 5, with its $`\sqrt{2}`$ factor, in place of Gurvits and Barnum (2002)’s result with a factor $`1`$.

$`\stackrel{~}{\varphi }(\mathrm{\Delta })_{\mathrm{}}^2A_{\mathrm{}}^2A_2^2,`$ (14)
where $`A:=[a_{ij}]`$, $`a_{ij}:=\varphi (\mathrm{\Delta }^{ij})_{\mathrm{}}`$.

$`A_2^2={\displaystyle \underset{ij}{}}a_{ij}^2={\displaystyle \underset{ij}{}}\varphi (\mathrm{\Delta }^{ij})_{\mathrm{}}^2.`$ (15)
(The first inequality is because the operator norm of a block matrix is bounded above by that of the matrix whose elements are the norms of the blocks, and the second is because the Frobenius norm is an upper bound to the operator norm.) $`\varphi (\mathrm{\Delta }^{ij})_{\mathrm{}}^22a^2\mathrm{\Delta }^{ij}_{\mathrm{}}^2`$ by Proposition 5, and it is an elementary norm inequality that $`\mathrm{\Delta }^{ij}_{\mathrm{}}\mathrm{\Delta }^{ij}_2`$. So

$`\stackrel{~}{\varphi }(\mathrm{\Delta })_{\mathrm{}}^22a^2{\displaystyle \underset{ij}{}}\varphi (\mathrm{\Delta }^{ij})_{\mathrm{}}^2`$
$`2a^2{\displaystyle \underset{ij}{}}\mathrm{\Delta }^{ij}_2^22a^2\mathrm{\Delta }_2^2.`$ (16)
Thus if $`\mathrm{\Delta }_2a/\sqrt{2}`$, $`\stackrel{~}{\varphi }(\mathrm{\Delta })_{\mathrm{}}1`$.

###### Corollary 1

If an $`m`$-partite unnormalized density matrix $`\rho :H_1\mathrm{}H_mH_1\mathrm{}H_m`$ satisifes $`\rho I_21/(2^{m/21})`$ then it is separable.

Proof: The main result of Gurvits and Barnum (2002) is that $`G(d_1d_2,1)Sep(d_1,d_2)`$. This is the base case for an induction on the number of subsystems. For the induction step, fix $`m>2`$ and suppose as our induction hypothesis the Corollary holds for $`m1`$, i.e. $`G(d_1,\mathrm{},d_{m1},2^{((m1)/21)})Sep(d_1,\mathrm{}d_l)`$. Theorem 1 tells us $`G(d_1,\mathrm{}d_m,2^{((m1)/21)}/\sqrt{2}2^{(m/21)})`$ is $`PSD(d_m)G(d_1\mathrm{}d_{m1},2^{(m1)/21)})`$-separable, and therefore (by the induction hypothesis and the recursive definition of separability) separable.

If we had an analogue to Theorem 1, with $`G(n_1,a)`$ instead of $`PSD(n_1)`$, and some constant $`\alpha `$ replacing $`1/\sqrt{2}`$, then we could get one over a polynomial instead of an exponential in Corollary 1, by recursively dividing systems into subsystems of more or less equal size, since this involves a logarithmic number of partitionings compared to splitting off one system at a time. The first step toward such a theorem would be to apply the characterization of $`C(d_1)C(d_2)`$-separability analogous to Proposition 4 (and discussed after that proposition above) to $`G(d_1,a),G(d_2,a);`$ the fact that neither of these cones is self-dual has so far proved an obstacle to our getting useful results along these lines.

###### Theorem 2

Consider $`\rho RLin(d_1,\mathrm{},d_m)`$. If $`\rho I_21`$ then

$$\rho =a_i\rho ^{(i)}\rho _i,a_i0$$
(17)
where for all $`i`$ $`\rho _1^{(i)}`$ is a real positive semidefinite $`d_1\times d_1`$ matrix; $`\rho _iRLin(d_2,\mathrm{},d_m)`$ and $`I\rho _i_21`$.

Proof: The proof goes essentially like that of Theorem 1 except that the blocks $`\mathrm{\Delta }^{ij}`$ are Hermitian by Proposition 3. Consequently we may use item 2. rather than item 1. of Proposition 5, and obtain the larger radius ball.

###### Corollary 2

If $`\rho RLin(d_1,\mathrm{},d_m)`$ and $`\rho I_21`$ then $`\rho `$ is real-separable. In other words the maximal separable ball in $`RLin(d_1,\mathrm{},d_m)`$ around the identity $`I`$ has radius $`1`$ .

The next Proposition is immediate from results of Gurvits and Barnum (2002), derived using “scaling,” i.e., considering all ways of writing a matrix $`\rho `$ as a positive scalar times the sum of the identity and a Hermitian perturbation, and minimizing the 2-norm of the perturbation).

###### Proposition 6

Define $`\mu (\rho )`$ as the maximum of $`\mathrm{\Delta }_2`$ over all $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ such that there exists an $`\alpha >0`$ for which $`\rho =\alpha (I+\mathrm{\Delta })`$. Let $`\rho `$ be a normalized ($`\mathrm{tr}\rho =1`$) density matrix. Then the following three statements are equivalent:
1. $`\mu (\rho )a`$.
2. $`\mathrm{tr}\rho ^21/(da^2)`$.
3. $`\rho I/d_2a/\sqrt{d(da^2)}`$.

Using this Proposition, Theorem 1 has (via Corollary 1) the following corollary:

###### Corollary 3

If an $`m`$-partite normalized (i.e. unit trace) density matrix $`\rho :H_1\mathrm{}H_mH_1\mathrm{}H_m`$ satisifes $`\rho I/d_2\frac{1}{2^{m/21d}}`$, where $`d=dim(H_1\mathrm{}H_m)`$, then it is separable.

(The proposition actually gives the (negligibly) tighter statement with $`2^{m/21}\sqrt{d(d2^{(m2)})}`$ in the denominator.)

## IV Discussion

In many interesting experimental or theoretical situations, the system is in a “pseudopure state”: a mixture of the uniform density matrix with some pure state $`\pi `$:

$`\rho _{ϵ,\pi }:=ϵ\pi +(1ϵ)I/d,`$ (18)
where $`d=d_1,..d_m`$ is the total dimension of the system. For example, consider nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) quantum information-processing (QIP), where $`d=2`$ (the Hilbert space of a nuclear spin), and $`m`$ is the number of spins addressed in the molecule being used. As discussed in more detail below, the initialization procedures standard in most NMRQIP implementations prepare pseudopure states.

Write

$`\rho _{ϵ,\pi }=(1/d)I+ϵ(\pi I/d).`$ (19)
Since $`ϵ(\pi I/d)_2=ϵ\sqrt{\frac{d1}{d}}`$, by Corollary 3, this is separable if

$`ϵ2^{(m/21)}/\sqrt{d(d1)},`$ (20)
For $`m`$ $`D`$-dimensional systems (so $`d=D^m`$), this implies the (negligibly loosened) bound

$$ϵ2^{(m/21)}/D^m.$$
(21)
This is an exponential improvement over the result in Rungta et al. (2001) (the qubit case is in Braunstein et al. (1999)) of $`ϵ1/(1+D^{2m1})`$. For $`m`$ qubits, for example, our result goes asymptotically as $`2^{((3/2)m1)}`$, versus $`2^{(2m1)}`$ in Braunstein et al. (1999). Another comparison is with our earlier bound of

$$ϵ1/(D^m1)$$
(22)
guaranteeing separability for $`m`$ $`D`$-dimensional systems with respect to every bipartition Gurvits and Barnum (2002). It is interesting that this is exponentially larger than the present bound guaranteeing multipartite separability, although we do not know that a tight multipartite bound would still exhibit this exponential separation.

In liquid-state NMR at high temperature $`T`$, the sample is placed in a high DC magnetic field. Each spin is in a highly mixed thermal state. It is not maximally mixed because of the energy splitting between the higher-energy state in which the spin is aligned with the magnetic field, and the higher-energy one in which it is anti-aligned. This gives probabilities for those states proportional to the Boltzmann factors $`e^{\pm \beta \mu B}`$, where $`\beta 1/kT`$ with $`k`$ Boltzmann’s constant, $`\mu `$ the magnetic moment of the nuclear spin, $`B`$ the external field strength. For realistic high-T liquid NMR values of $`T=300`$ Kelvin, $`B=11`$ Tesla, $`\beta \mu B3.746\times 10^51`$. Calling this $`\eta `$, $`e^{\pm \eta }1\pm \eta `$, so the probabilities are $`p_{}(1\eta )/2`$, $`p_{}(1+\eta )/2`$, where $``$/$``$ denote alignment/anti-alignment of the spin with the field. With independent, distinguishable nuclear spins, Maxwell-Boltzmann statistics give the highest-probability pure state, with all $`m`$ spins up (field-aligned), probability about $`(1+\eta )^m/2^m(1+m\eta )/2^m`$. Standard pseudopure-state preparation creates a mixture of this most probable pure state and the maximally mixed state, by applying a randomly chosen unitary from the group of unitaries fixing the all-spins-aligned state. ($`U`$ could be chosen uniformly (i.e. with Haar measure on this group), but efficient randomization procedures may draw from carefully chosen finite sets of such unitaries Knill et al. (1998).) Thus, we get a mixture

$`(1ϵ)I/2^m+ϵ|\mathrm{}\mathrm{}|,`$ (23)
with

$`ϵ=\eta m/2^m.`$ (24)
With $`\eta 3.746\times 10^5`$. this implies that below about 23 qubits, NMR pseudopure states are all separable, compared to the $`13`$ qubits one gets from the bound in Braunstein et al. (1999).

Even without entanglement considerations, it is clear that pseudopure-state NMR quantum computing will not give asymptotic gains over classical computing, because of the exponentially increasing signal-to-noise ratio from (24). As pointed out in Knill and Laflamme (1998), it does not follow that no application of liquid-state NMR can have better-than-classical asymptotic performance: NMRQIP is not limited to pseudopure-state initialization. It is not known that NMRQIP with other initialization schemes, such as those that involve preparing a fixed number of pseudopure qubits as the total number of spin qubits grows, can be efficiently classically simulated, and even with one pure qubit interesting things can be efficiently done for which no efficient classical algorithm is currently known Knill and Laflamme (1998). Another non-pseudopure initialization scheme is the Schulman-Vazirani algorithmic cooling procedure Schulman and Vazirani (1999), which essentially uses an efficient (and NMR-implementable) compression algorithm to convert the thermal state with entropy $`S`$, for $`m`$ nuclear spins, into $`\mathrm{log}S`$ maximally mixed qubits and $`m\mathrm{log}S`$ pure ones. Their work shows that the theoretical model derived from NMR with an initial thermal state is as powerful as standard quantum computation. Though the overhead required is polynomial, the space overhead is large enough to be impractical given the small number of qubits available in liquid-state NMR. But algorithmic cooling is certainly relevant in principle to the asymptotic power of an implementation, and could be practically relevant to a high temperature bulk QIP implementation that was expected to be sufficiently scalable that asymptotic considerations are relevant.

However, there is still the interesting possibility that one may produce an entangled overall density matrix (and not just a mixture of the maximally mixed state with an entangled state) via pseudopure-state NMRQIP. The results herein increase the number of qubits known to be required before this may be possible, although, since we have not shown that the bounds herein are tight, with our assumed $`\eta `$ even at 23 qubits there is no guarantee one can prepare an entangled pseudopure state. By contrast, from (22) and (24) one needs $`m=1/\eta `$ qubits (about $`26,700`$ for our $`\eta `$) to have any hope of obtaining a pseudopure state that is not bipartite-separable with respect to a partition of the qubits into two sets. Again, we remind the reader that non-pseudopure protocols could conceivably give such a “biseparable” state with far fewer qubits; in the Appendix we discuss some implications of our results for this possibility.

In conclusion we have derived an upper bound, exponentially better than those already known, on the Frobenius-norm radius of a ball of separable matrices around the identity matrix. The bound has implications for the minimum polarization needed for bulk quantum-information-processing protocols initialized by preparing pseudopure states from a thermal state by via averaging, to produce entanglement: known lower bounds on this minimal polarization are exponentially increased by our results. We stress, however, that this is just one application of a general, computationally simple sufficient criterion for multipartite entanglement, applicable to states of any form. Its geometric nature should make it useful in many applications, both theoretical and practical. The question of whether this bound is tight, or whether there is a larger separable Frobenius norm ball around the identity, remains open.

## Appendix A Entanglement and thermal initial states in NMR

Schulman and Vazirani’s algorithmic cooling protocol shows that it is, in theory, possible to prepare any entangled state from sufficiently many thermal NMR qubits. The question of just how many qubits are required by means possibly simpler than algorithmic cooling is also of interest. One can gain some information about this using our results, by applying Corollary 3 to the initial thermal density matrix of an NMR system. This matrix, which is approximately

$`\left(\begin{array}{cc}\frac{1+\eta }{2}& 0\\ 0& \frac{1\eta }{2}\end{array}\right)^n`$ (27)
(with each qubit expressed in the $`|,|`$ basis), has

$`\rho I/d_2^2={\displaystyle \frac{(1+\eta ^2)^m1}{2^m}}m\eta ^2/2^m.`$ (28)
This should be compared to Corollary 3’s separability condition, which guarantees separability if this squared distance is below $`2^{(3m2)}`$. The comparison gives that for $`m`$ qubits, the thermal state (and any state reachable from it by unitary transformation) is separable if

$`\eta m^{1/2}2^{m1}.`$ (29)
For the same experimental conditions considered above, 14 qubits are required before this bound is exceeded (rather than the 23 for the pseudopure state prepared from this thermal state).

If one wants the possibility of bipartite entanglement with respect to some partition of the qubits into two sets, it is necessary to beat the bound (closely related to (22))

$`\rho I/d_2^2{\displaystyle \frac{1}{d(d1)}}.`$ (30)
For the thermal state, this gives $`\eta m^{1/2}2^{m/2}`$. With $`\eta =3.746\times 10^5`$ as before, the bound is not surpassed until 25 qubits. Although this comes from an essentially tight bound, that does not imply that entanglement can be achieved through computation starting with this initial state. Although the thermal state has the same magnitude perturbation as some entangled state, the latter will have different eigenvalues, so unitary manipulation will not get us there, and it is an interesting question what we can achieve along these lines using NMR-implementable nonunitary manipulations (which may sometimes require extra thermal ancilla bits that should be counted as resources). To understand when unitary manipulations might be guaranteed to give us entanglement, a promising approach is to look for conditions on the spectrum of a matrix sufficient for an entangled state with that spectrum to exist. We conjecture that the problem of determining, from a spectrum, whether or not an entangled state with that spectrum exists, is NP-hard in terms of an appropriate measure of problem size; this does not rule out easier-to-evaluate sufficient conditions, perhaps obtained from relaxations of the above problem. Theorem 4 of Gurvits and Barnum (2002) gives some information on spectra sufficient to guarantee entanglement.

For the pseudopure fraction $`ϵ`$ there is an upper bound of $`2/(2+2^m)`$ from Gurvits and Barnum (2002) nearly matching the lower bound (22). Comparison to the expression $`ϵ=\eta m/2^m`$ for pseudopure polarization suggests that, at some large number of qubits $`m2/\eta `$, even pseudopure protocols will exceed this bound. With $`\eta =3.746\times 10^5`$ this gives about 53,400 qubits. This is far beyond the range generally viewed as relevant for liquid state NMR, and improved polarization is unlikely to bring it into this range. Since the state demonstrating entanglement at the upper bound is not in general pseudopure, exceeding this bound is still no guarantee we can get entanglement. Also, this is well into the range where algorithmic cooling could produce much stronger entanglement. Still, one can imagine that in other bulk QIP implementations the balance between the difficulty of implementing complex unitaries (relatively easy in NMR) and the difficulty of preparing large numbers of thermal qubits (apparently relatively hard in NMR) could be different, and entanglement generation by simple manipulations on thermal states, perhaps even by pseudopure state preparation, might be promising.

## Acknowledgments

We thank Manny Knill and Isaac Chuang for discussions, and the US DOE and NSA for financial support.


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# Mean Curvature Flows and Isotopy of Maps Between Spheres

## 1 Introduction

Let $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_1`$ and $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_2`$ be two compact Riemannian manifolds and $`M=\mathrm{\Sigma }_1\times \mathrm{\Sigma }_2`$ be the product manifold. We consider a smooth map $`f:\mathrm{\Sigma }_1\mathrm{\Sigma }_2`$ and denote the graph of $`f`$ by $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$; $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ is a submanifold of $`M`$ by the embedding $`id\times f`$. In , , and , the second author studies the deformation of $`f`$ by the mean curvature flow (see also the work of Chen-Li-Tian ). The idea is to deform $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ along the direction of its mean curvature vector in $`M`$ with the hope that $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ will remain a graph. This is the negative gradient flow of the volume functional and a stationary point is a “minimal map” introduced by Schoen in . In , the second author proves various long-time existence and convergence results of graphical mean curvature flows in arbitrary codimensions under assumptions on the Jacobian of the projection from $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ to $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_1`$. This quantity is denoted by $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ in  and $`\mathrm{\Omega }>0`$ if and only if $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ is a graph over $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_1`$ by the implicit function theorem. A crucial observation in  is that $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is a monotone quantity under the mean curvature flow when $`\mathrm{\Omega }>\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}`$.

In this paper, we discover new positive geometric quantities preserved by the graphical mean curvature flow. To describe these results, we recall the differential of $`f`$, $`df`$, at each point of $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_1`$ is a linear map between the tangent spaces. The Riemannian structures enables us to define the adjoint of $`df`$. Let $`\{\lambda _i\}`$ denote the eigenvalues of $`\sqrt{(df)^Tdf}`$, or the singular values of $`df`$, where $`(df)^T`$ is the adjoint of $`df`$. Note that $`\lambda _i`$ is always nonnegative. We say $`f`$ is an area decreasing map if $`\lambda _i\lambda _j<1`$ for any $`ij`$ at each point. In particular, $`f`$ is area-decreasing if the $`df`$ has rank one everywhere. Under this condition, the second author proves the Bernstein type theorem  and interior gradient estimates  for solutions of the minimal surface system. It is also proved in  that the set of graphs of area-decreasing linear transformations forms a convex subset of the Grassmannian. We prove that this condition is preserved along the mean curvature flow and the following global existence and convergence theorem.

Theorem A. Let $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_1`$ and $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_2`$ be compact Riemannian manifolds of constant curvature $`k_1`$ and $`k_2`$ respectively. Suppose $`k_1|k_2|`$, $`k_1+k_2>0`$ and $`dim(\mathrm{\Sigma }_1)2`$. If $`f`$ is a smooth area decreasing map from $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_1`$ to $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_2`$, the mean curvature flow of the graph of $`f`$ remains the graph of an area decreasing map, exists for all time, and converges smoothly to the graph of a constant map.

We remark that the condition $`k_1|k_2|`$ is enough to prove the long time existence of the flow. The following is an application to determine when a map between spheres is homotopically trivial. Corollary A  Any area-decreasing map from $`S^n`$ to $`S^m`$ with $`n2`$ is homotopically trivial. When $`m=1`$, the area-decreasing condition always holds and the above statement follows from the fact that $`\pi _n(S^1)`$ is trivial for $`n2`$. We remark that the result when $`m=2`$ is proved by the second author in  using a somewhat different method. The higher homotopy groups $`\pi _n(S^m)`$ has been computed in many cases and it is known that homotopically nontrivial maps do exist when $`nm`$. Since an area-decreasing map may still be surjective when $`n>m`$, we do not know any topological method that would imply such a conclusion.

We would like to thank Professor R. Hamilton, Professor D. H. Phong and Professor S.-T. Yau for their constant advice, encouragement and support.

## 2 Preliminaries

In this section, we recall notations and formulae for mean curvature flows. Let $`f:\mathrm{\Sigma }_1\mathrm{\Sigma }_2`$ be a smooth map between Riemannian manifolds. The graph of $`f`$ is an embedded submanifold $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ in $`M=\mathrm{\Sigma }_1\times \mathrm{\Sigma }_2`$. At any point of $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$, the tangent space of $`M`$, $`TM`$ splits into the direct sum of the tangent space of $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$, $`T\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ and the normal space $`N\mathrm{\Sigma }`$, the orthogonal complement of the tangent space $`T\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ in $`TM`$. There are isomorphisms $`T\mathrm{\Sigma }_1T\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ by $`XX+df(X)`$ and $`T\mathrm{\Sigma }_2N\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ by $`YY(df)^T(Y)`$ where $`(df)^T:T\mathrm{\Sigma }_2T\mathrm{\Sigma }_1`$ is the adjoint of $`df`$.

We assume the mean curvature flow of $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ can be written as a graph of $`f_t`$ for $`t[0,ϵ)`$ and derive the equation satisfied by $`f_t`$. The mean curvature flow is given by a smooth family of immersions $`F_t`$ of $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ into $`M`$ which satisfies

$$(\frac{F}{t})^{}=H$$

where $`H`$ is the mean curvature vector in $`M`$ and $`()^{}`$ denotes the projection onto the normal space $`N\mathrm{\Sigma }`$. Notice that we do not require $`\frac{F}{t}`$ is in the normal direction since the difference is only a tangential diffeomorphism (see for example White  for the issue of parametrization). By the definition of the mean curvature vector, this equation is equivalent to

$$(\frac{F}{t})^{}=(\mathrm{\Lambda }^{ij}_{\frac{F}{x^i}}^M\frac{F}{x^j})^{}$$

where $`\mathrm{\Lambda }^{ij}`$ is the inverse to the induced metric $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{ij}=\frac{F}{x^i},\frac{F}{x^j}`$ on $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$.

In terms of coordinates $`\{y^A\}_{A=1\mathrm{}n+m}`$ on $`M`$, we have

$$\mathrm{\Lambda }^{ij}_{\frac{F}{x^j}}^M\frac{F}{x^i}=\mathrm{\Lambda }^{ij}(\frac{^2F^A}{x^ix^j}+\frac{F^B}{x^i}\frac{F^C}{x^j}\mathrm{\Gamma }_{BC}^A)\frac{}{y^A}$$

where $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{BC}^A`$ is the Christoffel symbol of $`M`$ and thus

$$(\mathrm{\Lambda }^{ij}_{\frac{F}{x^j}}^M\frac{F}{x^i})^{}=\mathrm{\Lambda }^{ij}(\frac{^2F^A}{x^ix^j}+\frac{F^B}{x^i}\frac{F^C}{x^j}\mathrm{\Gamma }_{BC}^A\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Gamma }}_{ij}^k\frac{F^A}{x^k})\frac{}{y^A}$$

where $`\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Gamma }}_{ij}^k`$ is the Christoffel symbol of the induced metric on $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$.

By assumption, the embedding is given by the graph of $`f_t`$. We fix a coordinate system $`\{x^i\}`$ on $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_1`$ and consider $`F:\mathrm{\Sigma }_1\times [0,T)M`$ given by

$$F(x^1,\mathrm{},x^n,t)=(x^1,\mathrm{},x^n,f^{n+1},\mathrm{},f^{n+m}).$$

We shall use $`i,j,k,l\mathrm{}=1\mathrm{}n`$ and $`\alpha ,\beta ,\gamma =n+1\mathrm{}n+m`$ for the indices. Of course $`f^\alpha =f^\alpha (x^1,\mathrm{},x^n,t)`$ is time-dependent.

Therefore $`\frac{F}{t}=\frac{f^\alpha }{t}\frac{}{y^\alpha }`$ and

$$\mathrm{\Lambda }^{ij}(\frac{^2F^A}{x^ix^j}+\frac{F^B}{x^i}\frac{F^C}{x^j}\mathrm{\Gamma }_{BC}^A)\frac{}{y^A}=\mathrm{\Lambda }^{ij}(\frac{^2f^\alpha }{x^ix^j}\frac{}{y^\alpha }+\mathrm{\Gamma }_{ij}^l\frac{}{y^l}+\frac{f^\beta }{x^i}\frac{f^\gamma }{x^j}\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\beta \gamma }^\alpha \frac{}{y^\alpha }).$$

Thus the mean curvature flow equation is equivalent to the normal part of

$$[\frac{f^\alpha }{t}\mathrm{\Lambda }^{ij}(\frac{^2f^\alpha }{x^ix^j}+\frac{f^\beta }{x^i}\frac{f^\gamma }{x^j}\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\beta \gamma }^\alpha )]\frac{}{y^\alpha }\mathrm{\Lambda }^{ij}\mathrm{\Gamma }_{ij}^l\frac{}{y^l}$$

is zero.

Now given any vector $`a^i\frac{}{y^i}+b^\alpha \frac{}{y^\alpha }`$, the equation that the normal part being zero is equivalent to

$$b^\alpha a^i\frac{f^\alpha }{x^i}=0$$
(2.1)
for each $`\alpha `$. Therefore we obtain the evolution equation for $`f`$

$$\frac{f^\alpha }{t}\mathrm{\Lambda }^{ij}(\frac{^2f^\alpha }{x^ix^j}+\frac{f^\beta }{x^i}\frac{f^\gamma }{x^j}\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\beta \gamma }^\alpha +\mathrm{\Gamma }_{ij}^k\frac{f^\alpha }{x^k})=0.$$
(2.2)
where $`\mathrm{\Lambda }^{ij}`$ is the inverse to $`g_{ij}+h_{\alpha \beta }\frac{f^\alpha }{x^i}\frac{f^\beta }{x^j}`$ and $`g_{ij}=\frac{}{y^i},\frac{}{y^j}`$ and $`h_{\alpha \beta }=\frac{}{y^\alpha },\frac{}{y^\beta }`$ are the Riemannian metrics on $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_1`$ and $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_2`$, respectively. $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{ij}^k`$ and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\beta \gamma }^\alpha `$ are the Christoffel symbols of $`g_{ij}`$ and $`h_{\alpha \beta }`$ respectively.

(2.2) is a nonlinear parabolic system and the usual derivative estimates do not apply to this equations. However, the second author in  identifies a geometric quantity in terms of the derivatives of $`f^\alpha `$ that satisfies the maximum principle; this quantity and its evolution equation are recalled in the next section.

## 3 Two evolution equations

In this section, we recall two evolution equations along the mean curvature flow. The basic set-up is a mean curvature flow $`F:\mathrm{\Sigma }\times [0,T)M`$ of an $`n`$ dimensional submanifold $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ inside an $`n+m`$ dimensional Riemannian manifold $`M`$. Given any parallel tensor on $`M`$, we may consider the pull-back tensor by $`F_t`$ and consider the evolution equation with respect to the time-dependent induced metric on $`F_t(\mathrm{\Sigma })=\mathrm{\Sigma }_t`$. For the purpose of applying maximum principle, it suffices to derive the equation at a space-time point. We write all geometric quantities in terms of orthonormal frames keeping in mind all quantities are defined independent of choices of frames. At any point $`p\mathrm{\Sigma }_t`$, we choose any orthonormal frames $`\{e_i\}_{i=1\mathrm{}n}`$ for $`T_p\mathrm{\Sigma }_t`$ and $`\{e_\alpha \}_{\alpha =n+1\mathrm{}n+m}`$ for $`N_p\mathrm{\Sigma }_t`$. The second fundamental form $`h_{\alpha ij}`$ is denoted by $`h_{\alpha ij}=_{e_i}^Me_j,e_\alpha `$ and the mean curvature vector is denoted by $`H_\alpha =_ih_{\alpha ii}`$. For any $`j,k`$, we pretend

$$h_{n+i,jk}=0$$

if $`i>m`$.

When $`M=\mathrm{\Sigma }_1\times \mathrm{\Sigma }_2`$ is the product of $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_1`$ and $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_2`$, we denote the projections by $`\pi _1:M\mathrm{\Sigma }_1`$ and $`\pi _2:M\mathrm{\Sigma }_2`$. By abusing notations, we also denote the differentials by $`\pi _1:T_pMT_{\pi _1(p)}\mathrm{\Sigma }_1`$ and $`\pi _1:T_pMT_{\pi _2(p)}\mathrm{\Sigma }_2`$ at any point $`pM`$. The volume form $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ of $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_1`$ can be extended to a parallel $`n`$-form on $`M`$. For an oriented orthonormal basis $`e_1\mathrm{}e_n`$ of $`T_p\mathrm{\Sigma }`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }(e_1,\mathrm{},e_n)=\mathrm{\Omega }(\pi _1(e_1),\mathrm{},\pi _1(e_n))`$ is the Jacobian of the projection from $`T_p\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ to $`T_{\pi _1(p)}\mathrm{\Sigma }_1`$. This can also be considered as the pairing between the $`n`$-form $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ and the $`n`$-vector $`e_1\mathrm{}e_n`$ representing $`T_p\mathrm{\Sigma }`$. We use $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ to denote this function as $`p`$ varies along $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$. By the implicit function theorem, $`\mathrm{\Omega }>0`$ at $`p`$ if and only if $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ is locally a graph over $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_1`$ at $`p`$. The evolution equation of $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is calculated in Proposition 3.2 of .

When $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ is the graph of $`f:\mathrm{\Sigma }_1\mathrm{\Sigma }_2`$, the equation at each point can be written in terms of singular values of $`df`$ and special bases adapted to $`df`$. Denote the singular values of $`df`$, or eigenvalues of $`(df)^Tdf`$, by $`\{\lambda _i\}_{i=1\mathrm{}n}`$. Let $`r`$ denote the rank of $`df`$. We can rearrange them so that $`\lambda _i=0`$ when $`i`$ is greater than $`r`$. By singular value decomposition, there exist orthonormal bases $`\{a_i\}_{i=1\mathrm{}n}`$ for $`T_{\pi _1(p)}\mathrm{\Sigma }_1`$ and $`\{a_\alpha \}_{\alpha =n+1\mathrm{}n+m}`$ for $`T_{\pi _2(p)}\mathrm{\Sigma }_2`$ such that

$$df(a_i)=\lambda _ia_{n+i}$$

for $`i`$ less than or equal to $`r`$ and $`df(a_i)=0`$ for $`i`$ greater than $`r`$. Moreover,

$$e_i=\{\begin{array}{cc}\frac{1}{\sqrt{1+\lambda _i^2}}(a_i+\lambda _ia_{n+i})\hfill & \text{if}\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}\hspace{0.17em}1}ir\hfill \\ a_i\hfill & \text{if}r+1in\hfill \end{array}$$
(3.1)
becomes an orthonormal basis for $`T_p\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ and

$$e_{n+p}=\{\begin{array}{cc}\frac{1}{\sqrt{1+\lambda _p^2}}(a_{n+p}\lambda _pa_p)\hfill & \text{if}\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}\hspace{0.17em}1}pr\hfill \\ a_{n+p}\hfill & \text{if}r+1pm\hfill \end{array}$$
(3.2)
becomes an orthonormal basis for $`N_p\mathrm{\Sigma }`$.

In terms of the singular values $`\lambda _i`$,

$$\mathrm{\Omega }=\frac{1}{\sqrt{_{i=1}^n(1+\lambda _i^2)}}$$
(3.3)
With all the notations understood, the following result is essentially derived in Proposition 3.2 of  by noting that $`(\mathrm{ln}\mathrm{\Omega })_k=(_i\lambda _ih_{n+i,ik})`$.

###### Proposition 3.1

Suppose $`M=\mathrm{\Sigma }_1\times \mathrm{\Sigma }_2`$ and $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_1`$ and $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_2`$ are compact Riemannian manifolds of constant curvature $`k_1`$ and $`k_2`$ respectively. With respect to the particular bases given by the singular value decomposition of $`df`$, $`\mathrm{ln}\mathrm{\Omega }`$ satisfies the following equation.

$$\begin{array}{cc}& (\frac{d}{dt}\mathrm{\Delta })\mathrm{ln}\mathrm{\Omega }=\underset{\alpha ,i,k}{}h_{\alpha ik}^2+\underset{k,i}{}\lambda _i^2h_{n+i,ik}^2+2\underset{k,i<j}{}\lambda _i\lambda _jh_{n+j,ik}h_{n+i,jk}\hfill \\ & +\underset{i}{}\frac{\lambda _i^2}{1+\lambda _i^2}\left[(k_1+k_2)(\underset{ji}{}\frac{1}{1+\lambda _j^2})+k_2(1n)\right]\hfill \end{array}$$
(3.4)
Next we recall the evolution equation of parallel two tensors from . The calculation indeed already appears in . The equation will be used later to obtain more refined information. Given a parallel two-tensor $`S`$ on $`M`$, we consider the evolution of $`S`$ restricted to $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_t`$. This is a family of time-dependent symmetric two tensors on $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_t`$.

###### Proposition 3.2

Let $`S`$ be a parallel two-tensor on $`M`$. Then the pull-back of $`S`$ to $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_t`$ satisfies the following equation.

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill (\frac{d}{dt}\mathrm{\Delta })S_{ij}& =h_{\alpha il}H_\alpha S_{lj}h_{\alpha jl}H_\alpha S_{li}\hfill \\ & +R_{kik\alpha }S_{\alpha j}+R_{kjk\alpha }S_{\alpha i}\hfill \\ & +h_{\alpha kl}h_{\alpha ki}S_{lj}+h_{\alpha kl}h_{\alpha kj}S_{li}2h_{\alpha ki}h_{\beta kj}S_{\alpha \beta }\hfill \end{array}$$
(3.5)
where $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ is the rough Laplacian on two-tensors over $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_t`$ and $`S_{\alpha i}=S(e_\alpha ,e_i)`$, $`S_{\alpha \beta }=S(e_\alpha ,e_\beta )`$, and $`R_{kik\alpha }=R(e_k,e_i,e_k,e_\alpha )`$ is the curvature of $`M`$.

The evolution equations (3.5) of $`S`$ can be written in terms of evolving orthonormal frames as in Hamilton . If the orthonormal frames

$$F=\{F_1,\mathrm{},F_a,\mathrm{},F_n\}$$
(3.6)
are given in local coordinates by

$$F_a=F_a^i\frac{}{x_i}.$$

To keep them orthonormal, i.e. $`g_{ij}F_a^iF_b^j=\delta _{ab}`$, we evolve $`F`$ by the formula

$$\frac{}{t}F_a^i=g^{ij}g^{\alpha \beta }h_{\alpha jl}H_\beta F_a^l.$$

Let $`S_{ab}=S_{ij}F_a^iF_b^j`$ be the components of $`S`$ in $`F`$. Then $`S_{ab}`$ satisfies the following equation

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill (\frac{d}{dt}\mathrm{\Delta })S_{ab}& =R_{cac\alpha }S_{\alpha b}+R_{cbc\alpha }S_{\alpha a}\hfill \\ & +h_{\alpha cd}h_{\alpha ca}S_{db}+h_{\alpha cd}h_{\alpha cb}S_{da}\hfill \\ & 2h_{\alpha ca}h_{\beta cb}S_{\alpha \beta }.\hfill \end{array}$$
(3.7)
## 4 Preserving the distance-decreasing condition

In this section, we show the condition $`|df|<1`$, or each singular value $`\lambda _i<1`$, is preserved by the mean curvature flow. This result will not be used in proof of the Theorem A. But the proof of Theorem A depends on the computation in this section. The tangent space of $`M=\mathrm{\Sigma }_1\times \mathrm{\Sigma }_2`$ is identified with $`T\mathrm{\Sigma }_1T\mathrm{\Sigma }_2`$. Let $`\pi _1`$ and $`\pi _2`$ denote the projection onto the first and second summand in the splitting. We define the parallel symmetric two-tensor $`S`$ by

$$S(X,Y)=\pi _1(X),\pi _1(Y)\pi _2(X),\pi _2(Y)$$
(4.1)
for any $`X,YTM`$.

Let $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ be the graph of $`f:\mathrm{\Sigma }_1\mathrm{\Sigma }_1\times \mathrm{\Sigma }_2`$. $`S`$ restricts to a symmetric two-tensor on $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$ and we can represent $`S`$ in terms of the orthonormal basis (3.1).

Let $`r`$ denote the rank of $`df`$. By (3.1), it is not hard to check

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill \pi _1(e_i)& =\frac{a_i}{\sqrt{1+\lambda _{i}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}}},\pi _2(e_i)=\frac{\lambda _ia_{n+i}}{\sqrt{1+\lambda _{i}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}}}\text{for}\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}\hspace{0.17em}1}ir,\hfill \\ \hfill \text{and}\pi _1(e_i)& =a_i,\pi _2(e_i)=0\text{for}r+1in.\hfill \end{array}$$
(4.2)
Similarly, by (3.2) we have

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill \pi _1(e_{n+p})& =\frac{\lambda _pa_p}{\sqrt{1+\lambda _{p}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}}},\pi _2(e_{n+p})=\frac{a_{n+p}}{\sqrt{1+\lambda _{p}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}}}\text{for}\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}\hspace{0.17em}1}pr,\hfill \\ \hfill \text{and}\pi _1(e_{n+p})& =0,\pi _2(e_{n+p})=a_{n+p}\text{for}r+1pm.\hfill \end{array}$$
(4.3)
From the definition of $`S`$, we have

$$\begin{array}{c}\hfill S(e_i,e_j)=\frac{1\lambda _i^2}{1+\lambda _{i}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}}\delta _{ij}.\end{array}$$
(4.4)
In particular, the eigenvalues of $`S`$ are

$$\frac{1\lambda _{i}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}}{1+\lambda _{i}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}},i=1\mathrm{}n.$$
(4.5)
Notice that $`S`$ is positive-definite if and only if

$$|\lambda _i|<1$$

for any singular value $`\lambda _i`$ of $`df`$.

Now, at each point we express $`S`$ in terms of the orthonormal basis $`\{e_i\}_{i=1\mathrm{}n}`$ and $`\{e_\alpha \}_{\alpha =n+1\mathrm{}n+m}`$. Let $`I_{k\times k}`$ denote a $`k`$ by $`k`$ identity matrix. Then $`S`$ can be written in the block form

$$S=\left(S(e_k,e_l)\right)_{1k,ln+m}=\left(\begin{array}{cccc}B& 0& D& 0\\ 0& I_{nr\times nr}& 0& 0\\ D& 0& B& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& I_{mr\times mr}\end{array}\right)$$
(4.6)
where $`B`$ and $`D`$ are $`r`$ by $`r`$ matrices with $`B_{ij}=S(e_i,e_j)=\frac{1\lambda _i^2}{1+\lambda _i^2}\delta _{ij}`$ and $`D_{ij}=S(e_i,e_{n+j})=\frac{2\lambda _i}{1+\lambda _i^2}\delta _{ij}`$ for $`1i,jr`$. We show that the positivity of $`S`$ is preserved by the mean curvature flow. We remark that a similar positive definite tensor has been considered for the Lagrangian mean curvature flow in Smoczyk  and Smoczyk-Wang . The following lemma shows that the distance decreasing condition is preserved by the mean curvature flow if $`k_1|k_2|`$.

###### Lemma 4.1

The condition

$$T_{ij}=S_{ij}ϵg_{ij}>0\text{ for some }ϵ0$$
(4.7)
is preserved by the mean curvature flow if $`k_1|k_2|`$.

Proof. We compute the evolution equation for $`T_{ij}`$. From Proposition (3.2) and

$$\frac{}{t}g_{ij}=2h_{\alpha ij}H_\alpha ,$$

we have

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill (\frac{d}{dt}\mathrm{\Delta })T_{ij}& =h_{\alpha il}H_\alpha T_{lj}h_{\alpha jl}H_\alpha T_{li}+R_{kik\alpha }S_{\alpha j}+R_{kjk\alpha }S_{\alpha i}\hfill \\ & +h_{\alpha kl}h_{\alpha ki}T_{lj}+h_{\alpha kl}h_{\alpha kj}T_{li}+2ϵh_{\alpha ki}h_{\alpha kj}2h_{\alpha ki}h_{\beta kj}S_{\alpha \beta }.\hfill \end{array}$$
(4.8)
To apply Hamilton’s maximum principle, it suffices to prove that $`N_{ij}V^iV^j0`$ for any null eigenvector $`V`$ of $`T_{ij}`$, where $`N_{ij}`$ is the right hand side of (4.8). Since $`V`$ is a null eigenvector of $`T_{ij}`$, it satisfies $`_jT_{ij}V^j=0`$ for any $`i`$, and thus $`N_{ij}V^iV^j`$ is equal to

$$\begin{array}{c}\hfill 2ϵh_{\alpha ki}h_{\alpha kj}V^iV^j+2R_{kik\alpha }S_{\alpha j}V^iV^j2h_{\alpha ki}h_{\beta kj}S_{\alpha \beta }V^iV^j.\end{array}$$
(4.9)
Obviously, the first term of (4.9) is nonnegative. Applying the relation in (4.6) to the last term of (4.9) we obtain

$$2h_{\alpha ki}h_{\beta kj}S_{\alpha \beta }V^iV^j=\underset{1p,qr}{}2h_{n+pki}h_{n+qkj}S_{pq}V^iV^j+\underset{r+1p,qm}{}2h_{n+pki}h_{n+qkj}V^iV^j.$$

Since $`T_{pq}0`$ implies that $`S_{pq}ϵg_{pq}`$, we obtain $`2h_{\alpha ki}h_{\beta kj}S_{\alpha \beta }V^iV^j0`$. In the next lemma we show that $`R_{kik\alpha }S_{\alpha j}`$ is nonnegative definite whenever $`S_{ij}`$ is under the curvature assumption $`k_1|k_2|`$.

$`\mathrm{}`$

###### Lemma 4.2

$$\begin{array}{c}\hfill R_{kik\alpha }S_{\alpha j}=\frac{\lambda _i^2}{(1+\lambda _i^2)^2}\left[(k_1k_2)(n1)+(k_1+k_2)\underset{ki}{}\frac{1\lambda _k^2}{1+\lambda _k^2}\right]\delta _{ij}.\end{array}$$
(4.10)
Proof. We follow the calculation of the curvature terms in .

$$\begin{array}{cc}& \underset{k}{}R(e_\alpha ,e_k,e_k,e_i)\hfill \\ & =\underset{k}{}R_1(\pi _1(e_\alpha ),\pi _1(e_k),\pi _1(e_k),\pi _1(e_i))+R_2(\pi _2(e_\alpha ),\pi _2(e_k),\pi _2(e_k),\pi _2(e_i))\hfill \\ & =\underset{k}{}k_1\left[\pi _1(e_\alpha ),\pi _1(e_k)\pi _1(e_k),\pi _1(e_i)\pi _1(e_\alpha ),\pi _1(e_i)\pi _1(e_k),\pi _1(e_k)\right]\hfill \\ & +k_2\left[\pi _2(e_\alpha ),\pi _2(e_k)\pi _2(e_k),\pi _2(e_i)\pi _2(e_\alpha ),\pi _2(e_i)\pi _2(e_k),\pi _2(e_k)\right].\hfill \end{array}$$

Notice that $`\pi _2(X),\pi _2(Y)=X,Y\pi _1(X),\pi _1(Y)`$ since $`T\mathrm{\Sigma }_1T\mathrm{\Sigma }_2`$. Therefore

$$\begin{array}{cc}& \underset{k}{}R(e_\alpha ,e_k,e_k,e_i)\hfill \\ & =\underset{k}{}(k_1+k_2)\left[\pi _1(e_\alpha ),\pi _1(e_k)\pi _1(e_k),\pi _1(e_i)\pi _1(e_\alpha ),\pi _1(e_i)|\pi _1(e_k)|^2\right]\hfill \\ & +k_2(n1)\pi _1(e_\alpha ),\pi _1(e_i)\hfill \end{array}$$

Now use $`\pi _1(e_\alpha )=\lambda _p\pi _1(e_p)\delta _{\alpha ,n+p}`$ and $`S(e_j,e_{n+p})=\frac{2\lambda _j\delta _{jp}}{1+\lambda _{j}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}}`$ in (4.6), we have

$$\begin{array}{cc}& \underset{\alpha ,k}{}R_{kik\alpha }S_{\alpha j}=\underset{p,k}{}R_{n+p,kki}S_{n+p,j}\hfill \\ \hfill =& \underset{p,k}{}\{\lambda _p(k_1+k_2)[\pi _1(e_p),\pi _1(e_k)\pi _1(e_k),\pi _1(e_i)\pi _1(e_p),\pi _1(e_i)|\pi _1(e_k)|^2]\hfill \\ & +\lambda _pk_2(n1)\pi _1(e_p),\pi _1(e_i)\}S_{n+p,j}\hfill \\ \hfill =& \frac{2\lambda _i^2}{1+\lambda _{i}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}}\{(k_1+k_2)[\frac{\delta _{ij}}{(1+\lambda _{i}^{}{}_{}{}^{2})^2}\frac{\delta _{ij}}{1+\lambda _i^2}\underset{k}{}|\pi _1(e_k)|^2]\hfill \\ & +k_2(n1)\frac{\delta _{ij}}{1+\lambda _{i}^{}{}_{}{}^{2}}\}.\hfill \end{array}$$

Recall that $`|\pi _1(e_k)|^2=\frac{1}{1+\lambda _k^2}`$ and we obtain

$$\begin{array}{c}\hfill R_{kik\alpha }S_{\alpha j}=\frac{2\lambda _i^2\delta _{ij}}{(1+\lambda _i^2)^2}\left[(k_1+k_2)(\underset{ki}{}\frac{1}{1+\lambda _k^2})+k_2(1n)\right].\end{array}$$

This can be further simplified by noting

$$\begin{array}{cc}& (k_1+k_2)(\underset{ki}{}\frac{1}{1+\lambda _k^2})+k_2(1n)=\frac{(k_1k_2)(n1)}{2}+(k_1+k_2)\underset{ki}{}\frac{1\lambda _k^2}{2(1+\lambda _k^2)}\hfill \end{array}$$
(4.11)
where we use the following identity for each $`i`$

$$\begin{array}{cc}& (\underset{ki}{}\frac{1}{1+\lambda _k^2})\frac{n1}{2}=\underset{ki}{}(\frac{1}{1+\lambda _k^2}\frac{1}{2})=\underset{ki}{}\frac{1\lambda _k^2}{2(1+\lambda _k^2)}.\hfill \end{array}$$

$`\mathrm{}`$

## 5 Preserving the area-decreasing condition

In this section, we show that the area decreasing condition is preserved along the mean curvature flow. In the following, we require that $`n=dim(\mathrm{\Sigma }_1)2`$. By (4.5), the sum of any two eigenvalues of $`S`$ is

$$\frac{1\lambda _i^2}{1+\lambda _i^2}+\frac{1\lambda _j^2}{1+\lambda _j^2}=\frac{2(1\lambda _i^2\lambda _j^2)}{(1+\lambda _i^2)(1+\lambda _j^2)}.$$
(5.1)
Therefore the area decreasing condition $`|\lambda _i\lambda _j|<1`$ for $`ij`$ is equivalent to the two-positivity of $`S`$, i.e. the sum of any two eigenvalues is positive. We remark that curvature operator being two-positive is preserved by the Ricci flow, see Chen  or Hamilton  for detail.

The two-positivity of a symmetric two tensor $`P`$ can be related to the convexity of another tensor $`P^{[2]}`$ associated with $`P`$. The following notation is adopted from Caffarelli-Nirenberg-Spruck . Let $`P`$ be a self-adjoint operator on an $`n`$-dimensional inner product space. From $`P`$ we can construct a new self-adjoint operator

$$P^{[k]}=\underset{i=1}{\overset{k}{}}1\mathrm{}\underset{𝑖}{P}\mathrm{}1$$

acting on the exterior powers $`\mathrm{\Lambda }^k`$ by

$$P^{[k]}(\omega _1\mathrm{}\omega _k)=\underset{i=1}{\overset{k}{}}\omega _1\mathrm{}P(\omega _i)\mathrm{}\omega _k.$$

With the definition of $`P^{[k]}`$, we have the following lemma.

###### Lemma 5.1

Let $`\mu _1\mu _2\mathrm{}\mu _n`$ be the eigenvalues of $`P`$ with corresponding eigenvectors $`v_1\mathrm{}v_n`$. Then $`P^{[k]}`$ has eigenvalues $`\mu _{i_1}+\mathrm{}+\mu _{i_k}`$ and eigenvectors $`v_{i_1}\mathrm{}v_{i_k}`$, $`i_1<i_2\mathrm{}<i_k`$.

Recall that the Riemannian metric $`g`$ and $`S`$ are both in $`T\mathrm{\Sigma }T\mathrm{\Sigma }`$, the space of symmetric two tensor on $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$. We can identify $`S`$ with a self-adjoint operator on the tangent bundle through the metric $`g`$. Therefore $`S^{[2]}`$ and $`g^{[2]}`$ are both sections of $`(\mathrm{\Lambda }^2(T\mathrm{\Sigma }))^{}\mathrm{\Lambda }^2(T\mathrm{\Sigma })`$ associated to $`S`$ and $`g`$ respectively. We shall use orthonormal frames in the following calculation; this has the advantage that $`g`$ is the identity matrix and we will not distinguish lower index and upper index. With the above interpretation and (5.1), we have the following lemma.

###### Lemma 5.2

The area decreasing condition is equivalent to the convexity of $`S^{[2]}`$.

To show that the area decreasing condition is preserved, it suffices to prove that the convexity of $`S^{[2]}`$ is preserved. In fact, we prove the stronger result that the convexity of $`S^{[2]}ϵg^{[2]}`$ for $`ϵ>0`$ is preserved.

We compute the evolution equation of $`S^{[2]}ϵg^{[2]}`$ in terms of the evolving orthonormal frames $`\{F_a\}_{a=1\mathrm{}n}`$ introduced earlier in (3.6). We will use indices $`a,b,\mathrm{}`$ to denote components in the evolving frames. Denote $`S_{ab}=S(F_a,F_b)`$ and $`g_{ab}=g(F_a,F_b)=\delta _{ab}`$. Since $`\{F_aF_b\}_{a<b}`$ form a basis for $`\mathrm{\Lambda }^2T\mathrm{\Sigma }`$, we have

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill S^{[2]}(F_aF_b)=& S(F_a)F_b+F_aS(F_b)=S_{ac}F_cF_b+F_aS_{ac}F_c\hfill \\ \hfill =& \underset{c<d}{}(S_{ac}\delta _{bd}+S_{bd}\delta _{ac}S_{ad}\delta _{bc}S_{bc}\delta _{ad})F_cF_d\mathrm{and}\hfill \\ \hfill g^{[2]}(F_aF_b)=& \underset{c<d}{}(2\delta _{ac}\delta _{bd}2\delta _{ad}\delta _{bc})F_cF_d.\hfill \end{array}$$
(5.2)
We denote $`S_{(ab)(cd)}^{[2]}=(S_{ac}\delta _{bd}+S_{bd}\delta _{ac}S_{ad}\delta _{bc}S_{bc}\delta _{ad})`$ and $`g_{(ab)(cd)}^{[2]}=2\delta _{ac}\delta _{bd}2\delta _{ad}\delta _{bc}`$. Thus the evolution equation of $`S^{[2]}ϵg^{[2]}`$ in terms of the evolving orthonormal frames is

$$\begin{array}{cc}& (\frac{d}{dt}\mathrm{\Delta })(S_{ac}\delta _{bd}+S_{bd}\delta _{ac}S_{ad}\delta _{bc}S_{bc}\delta _{ad}2ϵ\delta _{ac}\delta _{bd}+2ϵ\delta _{ad}\delta _{bc})\hfill \\ & =R_{eae\alpha }S_{\alpha c}\delta _{bd}+R_{ece\alpha }S_{\alpha a}\delta _{bd}+R_{ebe\alpha }S_{\alpha d}\delta _{ac}+R_{ede\alpha }S_{\alpha b}\delta _{ac}\hfill \\ & R_{eae\alpha }S_{\alpha d}\delta _{bc}R_{ede\alpha }S_{\alpha a}\delta _{bc}R_{ebe\alpha }S_{\alpha c}\delta _{ad}R_{ece\alpha }S_{\alpha b}\delta _{ad}\hfill \\ & +h_{\alpha ef}h_{\alpha ea}S_{fc}\delta _{bd}+h_{\alpha ef}h_{\alpha ec}S_{fa}\delta _{bd}+h_{\alpha ef}h_{\alpha eb}S_{fd}\delta _{ac}+h_{\alpha ef}h_{\alpha ed}S_{fb}\delta _{ac}\hfill \\ & h_{\alpha ef}h_{\alpha ea}S_{fd}\delta _{bc}h_{\alpha ef}h_{\alpha ed}S_{fa}\delta _{bc}h_{\alpha ef}h_{\alpha eb}S_{fc}\delta _{ad}h_{\alpha ef}h_{\alpha ec}S_{fb}\delta _{ad}\hfill \\ & 2h_{\alpha ea}h_{\beta ec}S_{\alpha \beta }\delta _{bd}2h_{\alpha eb}h_{\beta ed}S_{\alpha \beta }\delta _{ac}+2h_{\alpha ea}h_{\beta ed}S_{\alpha \beta }\delta _{bc}+2h_{\alpha eb}h_{\beta ec}S_{\alpha \beta }\delta _{ad}.\hfill \end{array}$$
(5.3)
Now, we are ready to prove that the area decreasing condition is preserved along the mean curvature flow.

###### Lemma 5.3

Under the assumption of Theorem A, with $`S`$ defined in (4.1)and $`S^{[2]}`$ defined in (5.2), suppose there exists an $`ϵ>0`$ such that

$$S^{[2]}ϵg^{[2]}0$$
(5.4)
holds on the initial graph. Then this is preserved along the mean curvature flow.

Proof. Set

$$M_\eta =S^{[2]}ϵg^{[2]}+\eta tg^{[2]}.$$

Suppose the mean curvature flow exists on $`[0,T)`$. Consider any $`T_1<T`$, it suffices to prove that $`M_\eta >0`$ on $`[0,T_1]`$ for all $`\eta <\frac{ϵ}{2T_1}`$. If not, there will be a first time $`0<t_0T_1`$ where $`M_\eta =S^{[2]}ϵg^{[2]}+\eta tg^{[2]}`$ is nonnegative definite and has a null eigenvector $`V=V^{ab}F_aF_b`$ at some point $`x_0\mathrm{\Sigma }_{t_0}`$. We extend $`V^{ab}`$ to a parallel tensor in a neighborhood of $`x_0`$ along geodesic emanating out of $`x_0`$, and defined $`V^{ab}`$ on $`[0,T)`$ independent of $`t`$. Define $`f=_{a<b,c<d}V^{ab}M_{\eta _{(ab)(cd)}}V^{cd}`$, then by (5.2), $`f`$ equals

$$\begin{array}{cc}& \underset{a<b,c<d}{}\left(S_{ac}g_{bd}+S_{bd}g_{ac}S_{ad}g_{bc}S_{bc}g_{ad}+2(\eta tϵ)(g_{ac}g_{bd}g_{ad}g_{bc})\right)V^{ab}V^{cd}.\hfill \end{array}$$

At $`(x_0,t_0)`$, we have $`f=0`$, $`f=0`$ and $`(\frac{d}{dt}\mathrm{\Delta })f0`$ where $``$ denotes the covariant derivative and $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ denotes the Laplacian on $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_{t_0}`$.

We may assume that at $`(x_0,t_0)`$ the orthonormal frames $`\{F_a\}`$ is given by $`\{e_i\}`$ in (3.1). In the following, we use the orthonormal basis $`\{e_i\}`$ to write down the condition $`f=0`$ and $`f=0`$ at $`(x_0,t_0)`$. The basis $`\{e_i\}`$ diagonalizes $`S`$ with eigenvalues $`\{\lambda _i\}`$ and we order $`\{\lambda _i\}`$ such that

$$\lambda _1^2\lambda _2^2\mathrm{}\lambda _n^2$$

and

$$S_{nn}=\frac{1\lambda _n^2}{1+\lambda _n^2}\mathrm{}S_{22}=\frac{1\lambda _2^2}{1+\lambda _2^2}S_{11}=\frac{1\lambda _1^2}{1+\lambda _1^2}.$$
(5.5)
It follows from Lemma (5.1) that $`\{e_ie_j\}_{i<j}`$ are the eigenvectors of $`M_\eta `$. Thus we may assume that

$$V=e_1e_2.$$
(5.6)
At $`(x_0,t_0)`$, the condition $`f=0`$ is the same as

$$S_{11}+S_{22}=2ϵ2\eta t_0>0.$$
(5.7)
This is equivalent to

$$\frac{2(1\lambda _1^2\lambda _2^2)}{(1+\lambda _1^2)(1+\lambda _2^2)}=2(ϵ\eta t_0)>0.$$

Thus

$$\lambda _1\lambda _2<1\text{and}\lambda _i<1\text{for}i3.$$
(5.8)
Next, we compute the covariant derivative of the restriction of $`S`$ on $`\mathrm{\Sigma }`$.

$$\begin{array}{cc}& (_{e_i}S)(e_j,e_k)\hfill \\ \hfill =& e_i(S(e_j,e_k))S(_{e_i}e_j,e_k)S(e_j,_{e_i}e_k)\hfill \\ \hfill =& S(_{e_i}^Me_j_{e_i}e_j,e_k)+S(e_j,_{e_i}^Me_k_{e_i}e_k)\hfill \\ \hfill =& h_{\alpha ij}S_{\alpha k}+h_{\beta ik}S_{\beta j}.\hfill \end{array}$$

So

$$S_{jk,i}=h_{\alpha ij}S_{\alpha k}+h_{\beta ik}S_{\beta j}.$$

Recall that $`V_{ab}`$ is parallel at $`(x_0,t_0)`$ , $`V^{12}=1`$ and all other components of $`V^{ab}`$ is zero. At $`(x_0,t_0)`$, $`f=0`$ is equivalent to

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill 0=& \underset{i<j,k<l}{}_{e_p}((S_{ik}\delta _{jl}+S_{jl}\delta _{ik}S_{il}\delta _{jk}S_{jk}\delta _{il}+2(\eta tϵ)(\delta _{ik}\delta _{jl}ϵ\delta _{il}\delta _{jk}))V^{ij}V^{kl})\hfill \\ \hfill =& _{e_p}S_{11}+_{e_p}S_{22}\hfill \\ \hfill =& 2h_{\alpha p1}S_{\alpha 1}+2h_{\beta p2}S_{\beta 2}.\hfill \end{array}$$

Since $`S_{n+q,l}=\frac{2\lambda _q\delta _{ql}}{1+\lambda _q^2}`$, we have

$$\frac{\lambda _1}{1+\lambda _1^2}h_{n+1,p1}+\frac{\lambda _2}{1+\lambda _2^2}h_{n+2,p2}=0$$
(5.9)
for any $`p`$.

By (5.3), at $`(x_0,t_0)`$, we have

$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill (\frac{d}{dt}\mathrm{\Delta })f& =2\eta +2R_{k1k\alpha }S_{\alpha 1}+2R_{k2k\alpha }S_{\alpha 2}+2h_{\alpha kj}h_{\alpha k1}S_{j1}+2h_{\alpha kj}h_{\alpha k2}S_{j2}\hfill \\ & 2h_{\alpha k1}h_{\beta k1}S_{\alpha \beta }2h_{\alpha k2}h_{\beta k2}S_{\alpha \beta }.\hfill \end{array}$$
(5.10)
The ambient curvature term can be calculated using Lemma 4.2 and we derive

$$\begin{array}{cc}& \underset{k,\alpha }{}R_{k1k\alpha }S_{\alpha 1}+R_{k2k\alpha }S_{\alpha 2}.\hfill \\ \hfill =& (k_1k_2)(n1)\underset{i=1}{\overset{2}{}}\frac{\lambda _i^2}{(1+\lambda _i^2)^2}+(k_1+k_2)\underset{i=1}{\overset{2}{}}\frac{\lambda _i^2}{(1+\lambda _i^2)^2}\left[\underset{ji}{}\frac{1\lambda _j^2}{(1+\lambda _j^2)}\right].\hfill \end{array}$$
(5.11)
This can be simplified as

$$\begin{array}{cc}& (k_1k_2)(n1)\underset{i=1}{\overset{2}{}}\frac{\lambda _i^2}{(1+\lambda _i^2)^2}+(k_1+k_2)\underset{i=1}{\overset{2}{}}\frac{\lambda _i^2}{(1+\lambda _i^2)^2}\left[\underset{j>3}{}\frac{1\lambda _j^2}{(1+\lambda _j^2)}\right]\hfill \\ \hfill +& (k_1+k_2)\left[\frac{\lambda _1^2}{(1+\lambda _1^2)^2}\frac{1\lambda _2^2}{(1+\lambda _2^2)}+\frac{\lambda _2^2}{(1+\lambda _2^2)^2}\frac{1\lambda _1^2}{(1+\lambda _1^2)}\right]\hfill \\ \hfill =& (k_1k_2)(n1)\underset{i=1}{\overset{2}{}}\frac{\lambda _i^2}{(1+\lambda _i^2)^2}+(k_1+k_2)\underset{i=1}{\overset{2}{}}\frac{\lambda _i^2}{(1+\lambda _i^2)^2}\left[\underset{j>3}{}\frac{1\lambda _j^2}{(1+\lambda _j^2)}\right]\hfill \\ \hfill +& (k_1+k_2)\left[\frac{(\lambda _1^2+\lambda _2^2)(1\lambda _1^2\lambda _2^2)}{(1+\lambda _1^2)^2(1+\lambda _2^2)^2}\right].\hfill \end{array}$$
(5.12)
This is nonnegative by equation (5.8).

Using the relations in (4.6) again, the last four terms on the right hand side of (5.10) can be rewritten as

$$\begin{array}{cc}& \underset{p,k}{}2h_{n+p,k1}^2S_{11}+2h_{n+p,k2}^2S_{22}+2h_{n+p,k1}^2S_{pp}+2h_{n+p,k2}^2S_{pp}\hfill \\ & =\underset{k}{}(2h_{n+1,k1}^2S_{11}+2h_{n+2,k1}^2S_{11}+2h_{n+1,k2}^2S_{22}+2h_{n+2,k2}^2S_{22}\hfill \\ & +2h_{n+1,k1}^2S_{11}+2h_{n+2,k1}^2S_{22}+2h_{n+1,k2}^2S_{11}+2h_{n+2,k2}^2S_{22})\hfill \\ & +\underset{q3,k}{}2h_{n+q,k1}^2S_{11}+2h_{n+q,k2}^2S_{22}+2h_{n+q,k1}^2S_{qq}+2h_{n+q,k2}^2S_{qq}.\hfill \end{array}$$
(5.13)
Since $`S_{ii}S_{11}`$ for $`i2`$, it is clear that (5.13) is nonnegative if $`S_{11}0`$. Otherwise, from (5.7), we may assume that

$$S_{11}<0,S_{22}>0\mathrm{and}S_{11}+S_{22}>0.$$
(5.14)
In particular, we have $`\lambda _2^2<\lambda _1^2`$ and $`\lambda _1^2\lambda _2^2<1`$. From (5.9), we have

$$h_{n+1,p1}^2=\frac{\lambda _2^2(1+\lambda _1^2)^2}{\lambda _1^2(1+\lambda _2^2)^2}h_{n+2,p2}^2.$$

Since $`\lambda _2^2<\lambda _1^2`$ and $`\lambda _1^2\lambda _2^2<1`$, we have $`\frac{\lambda _2^2(1+\lambda _1^2)^2}{\lambda _1^2(1+\lambda _2^2)^2}<1`$. Thus

$$h_{n+1,p1}^2h_{n+2,p2}^2\mathrm{for}\mathrm{all}p1.$$
(5.15)
Recall that $`S_{qq}S_{22}`$ for $`q3`$. The right hand side of (5.13) can be regrouped as

$$\begin{array}{cc}& \underset{k}{}\left[(4h_{n+1,k1}^2S_{11}+4h_{n+2,k2}^2S_{22})+2h_{n+2,k1}^2(S_{11}+S_{22})+2h_{n+1,k2}^2(S_{11}+S_{22})\right]\hfill \\ & +\underset{q3,k}{}\left[2h_{n+q,k1}^2(S_{11}+S_{qq})+2h_{n+q,k2}^2(S_{22}+S_{qq})\right].\hfill \end{array}$$

This is nonnegative by (5.5) ,(5.14), and (5.15). Thus, we have $`(\frac{d}{dt}\mathrm{\Delta })f2\eta >0`$ at $`(x_0,t_0)`$ and this is a contradiction. $`\mathrm{}`$

Remark: The condition $`S^{[2]}ϵg^{[2]}0`$ is equivalent to $`\frac{(1\lambda _i^2\lambda _j^2)}{(1+\lambda _i^2)(1+\lambda _j^2)}ϵ`$ for all $`ij`$. In particular, we have $`\lambda _i^2\frac{1ϵ}{ϵ}`$. This implies that the Lipschitz norm of $`f`$ is preserved along the mean curvature flow.

## 6 Long time existence and convergence

In this section, we prove Theorem A using the evolution equation (3.4) of $`\mathrm{ln}\mathrm{\Omega }`$.

Proof of Theorem A. Since $`|\lambda _i\lambda _j|<1`$ for $`ij`$ and $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_1`$ is compact, we can find an $`ϵ>0`$ such that $`\frac{(1\lambda _i^2\lambda _j^2)}{(1+\lambda _i^2)(1+\lambda _j^2)}ϵ`$ for all $`ij`$. By Lemma (5.3), the condition $`\frac{(1\lambda _i^2\lambda _j^2)}{(1+\lambda _i^2)(1+\lambda _j^2)}ϵ`$ for all $`ij`$ is preserved along the mean curvature flow. In particular, we have $`|\lambda _i\lambda _j|\sqrt{1ϵ}`$ and $`\lambda _i^2\frac{1ϵ}{ϵ}`$. This implies $`\mathrm{\Sigma }_t`$ remains the graph of a map $`f_t:\mathrm{\Sigma }_1\mathrm{\Sigma }_2`$ whenever the flow exists. Each $`f_t`$ has uniformly bounded $`|df_t|`$.

We look at the evolution equation (3.4) of $`\mathrm{ln}\mathrm{\Omega }`$. The quadratic terms of the second fundamental form in equation (3.4) is

$$\begin{array}{cc}& \underset{\alpha ,i,k}{}h_{\alpha ik}^2+\underset{k,i}{}\lambda _i^2h_{n+i,ik}^2+2\underset{k,i<j}{}\lambda _i\lambda _jh_{n+j,ik}h_{n+i,jk}\hfill \\ \hfill =& \delta |A|^2+\underset{k,i}{}\lambda _i^2h_{n+i,ik}^2+(1\delta )|A|^2+2\underset{k,i<j}{}\lambda _i\lambda _jh_{n+j,ik}h_{n+i,jk}.\hfill \end{array}$$

Let $`1\delta =\sqrt{1ϵ}`$. Using $`|\lambda _i\lambda _j|1\delta `$, we conclude that this term is bounded below by $`\delta |A|^2`$ .

By equation (4.11), the curvature term in (3.4) equals

$$\begin{array}{cc}& \frac{(k_1k_2)(n1)}{2}\underset{i=1}{\overset{n}{}}\frac{\lambda _i^2}{1+\lambda _i^2}+(k_1+k_2)\underset{i=1}{\overset{n}{}}\frac{\lambda _i^2}{1+\lambda _i^2}\left[\underset{ji}{}\frac{1\lambda _j^2}{2(1+\lambda _j^2)}\right].\hfill \end{array}$$
(6.1)
The second term on the right hand side of (6.1) can be simplified as

$$\begin{array}{cc}& \underset{i=1}{\overset{n}{}}\frac{\lambda _i^2}{1+\lambda _i^2}\left[\underset{ji}{}\frac{1\lambda _j^2}{2(1+\lambda _j^2)}\right]=\underset{i=1}{\overset{n}{}}\underset{ij}{}\frac{\lambda _i^2\lambda _i^2\lambda _j^2}{2(1+\lambda _i^2)(1+\lambda _j^2)}\hfill \\ \hfill =& \underset{i<j}{}\frac{\lambda _i^2+\lambda _j^22\lambda _i^2\lambda _j^2}{2(1+\lambda _i^2)(1+\lambda _j^2)}.\hfill \end{array}$$
(6.2)
This is non-negative because $`|\lambda _i\lambda _j|1\delta `$. Thus $`\mathrm{ln}\mathrm{\Omega }`$ satisfies the following differential inequality with $`k_1|k_2|`$:

$$\frac{d}{dt}\mathrm{ln}\mathrm{\Omega }\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{ln}\mathrm{\Omega }+\delta |A|^2.$$
(6.3)
According to the maximum principle for parabolic equations, $`\mathrm{min}_{\mathrm{\Sigma }_t}\mathrm{ln}\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is nondecreasing in time. In particular, $`\mathrm{\Omega }min_{\mathrm{\Sigma }_0}\mathrm{\Omega }=\mathrm{\Omega }_0`$ is preserved and $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ has a positive lower bound. Let $`u=\frac{\mathrm{ln}\mathrm{\Omega }\mathrm{ln}\mathrm{\Omega }_0+c}{\mathrm{ln}\mathrm{\Omega }_0+c}`$ where $`c`$ is a positive number such that $`\mathrm{ln}\mathrm{\Omega }_0+c>0`$. Recall that $`0<\mathrm{\Omega }1`$. This implies that $`0<u1`$ and $`u`$ satisfies the following differential inequality

$$\frac{d}{dt}u\mathrm{\Delta }u+\frac{\delta }{\mathrm{ln}\mathrm{\Omega }_0+c}|A|^2.$$

Because $`u`$ is also invariant under parabolic dilation, it follows from the blow-up analysis in the proof of Theorem A  that the mean curvature flow of the graph of $`f`$ remains a graph and exists for all time under the assumption that $`k_1|k_2|`$.

Using $`\lambda _i^2\frac{1ϵ}{ϵ}`$ and $`\lambda _i\lambda _j\sqrt{1ϵ}`$, it is not hard to show

$$(k_1+k_2)\underset{i<j}{}\frac{\lambda _i^2+\lambda _j^22\lambda _i^2\lambda _j^2}{2(1+\lambda _i^2)(1+\lambda _j^2)}c_1\underset{i=1}{\overset{n}{}}\lambda _i^2c_1\mathrm{ln}\underset{i=1}{\overset{n}{}}(1+\lambda _i^2)$$
(6.4)
where $`c_1`$ is a constant that depends on $`ϵ,k_1`$ and $`k_2`$.

Recall equation (3.3) and we obtain

$$\frac{d}{dt}\mathrm{ln}\mathrm{\Omega }\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{ln}\mathrm{\Omega }c_3\mathrm{ln}\mathrm{\Omega }.$$

By the comparison theorem for parabolic equations, $`\mathrm{min}_{\mathrm{\Sigma }_t}\mathrm{ln}\mathrm{\Omega }`$ is non-decreasing in $`t`$ and $`\mathrm{min}_{\mathrm{\Sigma }_t}\mathrm{ln}\mathrm{\Omega }0`$ as $`t\mathrm{}`$. This implies that $`\mathrm{min}_{\mathrm{\Sigma }_t}\mathrm{\Omega }1`$ and $`\mathrm{max}|\lambda _i|0`$ as $`t\mathrm{}`$. We can then apply Theorem B in  to conclude smooth convergence to a constant map at infinity.

$`\mathrm{}`$


text:
# Nilpotent Spacelike Jorden Osserman pseudo-Riemannian manifolds

## 1. Introduction

Let $`(M,g)`$ be a pseudo-Riemannian manifold of signature $`(p,q)`$. Let

$$S^\pm (M,g):=\{xTM:(x,x)=\pm 1\}$$

be the bundles of unit spacelike and unit timelike vectors, respectively. Let $`R`$ be the associated Riemann curvature tensor. If $`xT_PM`$, then the Jacobi operator $`J(x)`$ is the self-adjoint linear map of $`T_PM`$ which is characterized by the identity:

(1.a)
$$g(J(x)y,z)=R(y,x,x,z).$$

One says that $`(M,g)`$ is spacelike Osserman or timelike Osserman if the eigenvalues of $`J`$ are constant on $`S^+(M,g)`$ or on $`S^{}(M,g)`$, respectively. These are equivalent notions if $`p1`$ and $`q1`$  so such manifolds are simply said to be Osserman.

If $`p=0`$, and similarly if $`q=0`$, then one is in the Riemannian setting. If $`(M,g)`$ is a rank $`1`$ symmetric space or if $`(M,g)`$ is flat, then the local isometries of $`(M,g)`$ act transitively on $`S^+(M,g)`$ so the eigenvalues of $`J`$ are constant on $`S^+(M,g)`$. Osserman  wondered if the converse held. Work of Chi  and of Nikolayevsky  has shown this to be the case if the dimension is different from $`8`$ and $`16`$.

If $`p=1`$, and similarly if $`q=1`$, then one is in the Lorentzian setting. Blažić, Bokan and Gilkey  and García–Río, Kupeli and Vázquez-Abal  have shown that Lorentzian Osserman manifolds have constant sectional curvature.

The situation is quite different in the higher signature setting where $`p2`$ and $`q2`$. There exist Osserman pseudo-Riemannian manifolds which are not symmetric spaces ; we refer to  for an excellent and quite comprehensive treatment of the subject.

In the higher signature setting, it is natural to impose a more restrictive hypothesis and study the Jordan normal form of the Jacobi operator. We say that $`(M,g)`$ is spacelike Jordan Osserman or is timelike Jordan Osserman if the Jordan normal form of $`J(x)`$ is constant on $`S^+(M,g)`$ or on $`S^{}(M,g)`$, respectively. Relatively few examples of such manifolds are known.

The eigenvalue $`0`$ is distinguished. One says that $`(M,g)`$ is nilpotent Osserman if $`J(x)^{p+q}=0`$ or equivalently if $`0`$ is the only eigenvalue of $`J(x)`$ for any $`xTM`$. The orders of nilpotency $`n(x)`$ and $`n(M)`$ are then defined by the properties:

$$J(x)^{n(x)}=0,J(x)^{n(x)1}0,\text{and}n(M):=\underset{xTM}{sup}n(x).$$

Fiedler and Gilkey  gave examples of $`m`$ dimensional pseudo-Riemannian manifolds for any $`m4`$ where $`n(M)=m2`$; thus $`n(M)`$ can be arbitrarily large. However for these examples, $`n(x)`$ was constant neither on $`S^+(M,g)`$ or on $`S^{}(M,g)`$ so these manifolds were neither spacelike nor timelike Jordan Osserman.

Results of Gilkey and Ivanova  show that if $`(M,g)`$ is spacelike Jordan Osserman of signature $`(p,q)`$ where $`p<q`$, then the Jacobi operator is diagonalizable and hence $`(M,g)`$ can not be not nilpotent. Thus we suppose $`pq`$ henceforth. Examples of spacelike and timelike Jordan Osserman manifolds of neutral signature $`(s,s)`$ which are nilpotent of order $`2`$ have been constructed Gilkey, Ivanova, and Zhang  for any $`s2`$. Examples of spacelike and timelike Jordan Osserman manifolds of signature $`(2,2)`$ which are nilpotent of order $`3`$ have been constructed by García-Rió, Vázquez-Abal and Vázquez-Lorenzo . This brief note is devoted to the proof of the following result:

###### Theorem 1.1.

If $`s2`$, then there exist pseudo-Riemannian manifolds of signature $`(2s,s)`$ which are spacelike Jordan Osserman nilpotent of order $`3`$ and which are not timelike Jordan Osserman.

Our examples is quite different in flavor from those described in  in several respects. The primary feature is that we are not in the balanced setting where $`p=q`$; the extra timelike directions play a central role in our construction. Additionally, the examples of  are also timelike Jordan Osserman; this is not the case for our examples.

To prove Theorem 1.1, it is convenient to work first in a purely algebraic context. In Section 2, we shall construct a family of algebraic curvature tensors $`R`$ on a vector space $`V`$ of signature $`(2s,s)`$ which are spacelike Jordan Osserman nilpotent of order $`3`$ and which are not timelike Jordan Osserman. We complete the discussion in Section 3 by realizing this family geometrically. Our construction will show that in fact there are many such examples; although we shall use quadratic polynomials to define the metric in question, this is an inessential feature.

## 2. Algebraic curvature tensors

Let $`V`$ be a finite dimensional real vector space which is equipped with a non-degenerate symmetric bilinear form $`g(,)`$ of signature $`(p,q)`$. Let $`R^4V^{}`$. We say that $`R`$ is an algebraic curvature tensor if $`R`$ satisfies the symmetries of the Riemann curvature tensor:

$`R(x,y,z,w)=R(y,x,z,w),`$
(2.a) $`R(x,y,z,w)=R(z,w,x,y),`$
$`R(x,y,z,w)+R(y,z,x,w)+R(z,x,y,w)=0.`$
The associated Jacobi operator is then defined using equation (1.a) and the notions spacelike Jordan Osserman and so forth are defined analogously.

Let $`s2`$. Let $`𝒰:=\{U_1,\mathrm{},U_s\}`$, $`𝒱:=\{V_1,\mathrm{}.,V_s\}`$, and $`𝒯:=\{T_1,\mathrm{},T_s\}`$ comprise a basis for $`^{3s}`$. We let indices $`a,b,c,d`$ range from $`1`$ through $`s`$.

###### Lemma 2.1.

Let $`g_{ab}=g_{ba}`$ be an arbitrary symmetric matrix. Define a metric $`g`$ of signature $`(2s,s)`$ on $`^{3s}`$ whose non-zero components are:

$$g(U_a,U_b)=g_{ab},g(U_a,V_b)=g(V_b,U_a)=\delta _{ab},g(T_a,T_b)=\delta _{ab}.$$

Let $`R^{(1)}`$ and $`R^{(2)}`$ be algebraic curvature tensors on $`\mathrm{Span}\{U_a\}`$. Define a $`4`$ tensor $`R=R(R^{(1)},R^{(2)})`$ on $`^{3s}`$ whose non-zero entries are

$`R(U_a,U_b,U_c,U_d)`$ $`:=`$ $`R^{(1)}(U_a,U_b,U_c,U_d),`$
$`R(U_a,U_b,U_c,T_d)`$ $`=`$ $`R(U_a,U_b,T_c,U_d)=R(U_a,T_b,U_c,U_d)`$
$`=`$ $`R(T_a,U_b,U_c,U_d):=R^{(2)}(U_a,U_b,U_c,U_d).`$
1. $`R`$ is an algebraic curvature tensor on $`^3`$.
2. If $`R^{(2)}(U_a,U_b,U_c,U_d):=\delta _{ad}\delta _{bc}\delta _{ac}\delta _{bd}`$, then $`R`$ is spacelike Jordan Osserman nilpotent of order $`3`$ and not timelike Jordan Osserman.

###### Proof.

The sum of algebraic curvature tensors is again an algebraic curvature tensor. If $`R^{(2)}=0`$, then clearly $`R`$ is an algebraic curvature tensor since we may assume $`x,y,z,w𝒰`$ in establishing the relations of display (2.a). We may therefore set $`R^{(1)}=0`$ and consider only the effect of $`R^{(2)}`$ in proving assertion (1). In that case, exactly one of the vectors $`x,y,z,w`$ must be taken from $`𝒯`$ and the remaining $`3`$ vectors must be taken from $`𝒰`$. Suppose, for example, $`x𝒯`$ while $`y,z,w𝒰`$. Then replacing $`x`$ by the corresponding element $`\overline{x}𝒰`$ replaces $`R`$ by $`R^{(2)}`$ and thus the relations of display (2.a) follow for $`R`$ because from the corresponding relations for $`R^{(2)}`$. This proves assertion (1).

The tensor $`R^{(2)}`$ of assertion (2) is the algebraic curvature tensor of constant sectional curvature $`+1`$ with respect to the standard metric $`(U_a,U_b)=\delta _{ab}`$. Consequently, it is invariant under the action of the orthogonal group $`O(s)`$.

Expand a spacelike vector $`X^{3s}`$ in the form $`X=u_aU_a+v_aV_a+t_aT_a`$ where we adopt the Einstein convention and sum over repeated indices. Then

$$g(X,X)=g_{ab}u_au_b+2\delta _{ab}u_av_b\delta _{ab}t_at_b.$$

If $`\stackrel{}{u}=0`$, then $`g(X,X)0`$. Consequently $`\stackrel{}{u}0`$. By making an orthogonal rotation in the $`U`$ vectors and the same orthogonal rotation in the $`V`$ and in the $`T`$ vectors and by rescaling $`X`$, we may suppose without loss of generality that the bases $`𝒰`$, $`𝒱`$, and $`𝒯`$ have been chosen so that the general form of $`g`$ and $`R`$ is the same, so that $`u_1=1`$, and so that $`u_a=0`$ for $`a>1`$. For $`1a,b,c,ds`$, define $`R_{abcd}^{(2)}:=R^{(2)}(U_a,U_b,U_c,U_d)`$. Then:

$$\begin{array}{ccc}(J(X)U_a,U_b)=C_{ab},\hfill & (J(X)U_a,T_b)=R_{a11b}^{(2)},\hfill & (J(X)U_a,V_b)=0,\hfill \\ (J(X)T_a,U_b)=R_{a11b}^{(2)},\hfill & (J(X)T_a,T_b)=0,\hfill & (J(X)T_a,V_b)=0,\hfill \\ (J(X)V_a,U_b)=0,\hfill & (J(X)V_a,T_b)=0,\hfill & (J(X)V_a,V_b)=0,\hfill \end{array}$$

where $`C_{ab}=C_{ba}`$ is an appropriately chosen matrix. We then have:

$$J(X)U_a=C_{ab}V_bR_{a11b}^{(2)}T_b,J(X)T_a=R_{a11b}^{(2)}V_b,J(X)V_a=0.$$

It is now clear that $`J(X)^3=0`$. We have $`J(X)X=0`$ and $`J(X)V_a=0`$. Since $`R_{a11b}^{(2)}=0`$ if $`a=1`$ or $`b=1`$, $`J(X)T_1=0`$. Set $`R_{a11b}^{(2)}=\delta _{ab}`$ for $`a2`$. Since $`u_1=1`$, $`\{X,U_2,\mathrm{},U_s,T_1,\mathrm{},T_s,V_1,\mathrm{},V_s\}`$ is a basis for $`V`$. Consequently:

$`\mathrm{Range}(J(X))=\mathrm{Span}\{J(X)X,J(X)U_2,\mathrm{},J(X)U_s,J(X)T_1,\mathrm{},J(X)T_s,`$
$`J(X)V_1,\mathrm{},J(X)V_s\}`$
$`=\mathrm{Span}\{J(X)U_2,\mathrm{},J(X)U_s,J(X)T_2,\mathrm{},J(X)T_s\}`$
$`=\mathrm{Span}\{C_{2b}V_bT_2,\mathrm{},C_{sb}V_bT_s,V_2,\mathrm{},V_s\}.`$
The set $`\{C_{2b}V_bT_2,\mathrm{},C_{sb}V_bT_s,V_2,\mathrm{},V_s\}`$ is linearly independent. Furthermore:

$`\mathrm{Range}(J(X))\mathrm{ker}(J(X))=\mathrm{Span}\{V_2,\mathrm{},V_s\},`$
$`\mathrm{Range}(J(X)^2)=\mathrm{Span}\{V_2,\mathrm{},V_s\}.`$
It is now clear that $`R`$ is spacelike Jordan Osserman nilpotent of order $`3`$. Since $`J(T_1)=0`$ while $`J(U_1V_1)=J(U_1)0`$, $`R`$ is not timelike Jordan Osserman. ∎

## 3. Geometric Realizations

We complete the proof of Theorem 1.1 by showing that the structures of Lemma 2.1 are geometrically realizable. The metrics we shall consider are similar those described in different contexts in . We take coordinates of the form $`(u_1,\mathrm{},u_s,v_1,\mathrm{},v_s,t_1,\mathrm{},t_s)`$ on $`^{3s}`$. Let

$$U_a:=\frac{}{u_a},V_a:=\frac{}{v_a},\text{and}T_a:=\frac{}{t_a}$$

be the associated coordinate frame for the tangent bundle. We let the index $`r`$ range from $`1`$ to $`3s`$ and index the full coordinate frame

$$\{e_1,\mathrm{},e_{3s}\}:=\{U_1,\mathrm{},U_s,V_1,\mathrm{},V_s,T_1,\mathrm{},T_s\}.$$

Theorem 1.1 will follow from Lemma 2.1 and from the following Lemma:

###### Lemma 3.1.

Let $`R^{(2)}`$ be a fixed algebraic curvature tensor on $`^s`$. Define a metric $`g`$ of signature $`(2s,s)`$ on $`^{2s,s}`$ whose non-zero inner products are given by:

$`g(U_a,U_b)=\psi _{abcd}u_ct_d\text{ where }\psi _{abcd}=\psi _{bacd}:=\frac{2}{3}(R_{acdb}^{(2)}+R_{adcb}^{(2)}),`$
$`g(U_a,V_b)=g(V_b,U_a)=\delta _{ab},\text{and}g(T_a,T_b)=\delta _{ab}.`$
Let $`R_{abcd}^{(1)}(u,t):=R(U_a,U_b,U_c,U_d)(u,t)`$. Then $`R(u,t)=R(R^{(1)}(u,t),R^{(2)})`$.

###### Proof.

At this point, we change our indexing convention slightly for the remainder of the proof. We shall let indices $`a,b,c`$ index elements of $`𝒰`$, indices $`\alpha ,\beta ,\gamma `$ index elements of $`𝒱`$, and indices $`i,j,k`$ index elements of $`𝒯`$. Indices $`r_\mu `$ will index the full coordinate basis. By an abuse of notation, we shall set $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{abc}=g(_{U_a}U_b,U_c)`$, $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{abi}=g(_{U_a}U_b,T_i)`$, etc. We replace an element of $`𝒯`$ by the corresponding element of $`𝒰`$ to define $`\stackrel{~}{\psi }_{abci}`$, $`\stackrel{~}{R}_{abci}^{(2)}`$, $`\stackrel{~}{R}_{abic}^{(2)}`$, $`\stackrel{~}{R}_{aibc}^{(2)}`$, and $`\stackrel{~}{R}_{iabc}^{(2)}`$. The non-zero Christoffel symbols of the metric are:

(3.a)
$$\begin{array}{c}\mathrm{\Gamma }_{abc}=\frac{1}{2}(\stackrel{~}{\psi }_{bcai}+\stackrel{~}{\psi }_{acbi}\stackrel{~}{\psi }_{abci})t_i,\hfill \\ \mathrm{\Gamma }_{iab}=\mathrm{\Gamma }_{aib}=\mathrm{\Gamma }_{abi}=\frac{1}{2}\stackrel{~}{\psi }_{abci}u_c.\hfill \end{array}$$

We raise indices to see:

(3.b)
$$\mathrm{\Gamma }_{r_1r_2}{}_{}{}^{a}=0,\mathrm{\Gamma }_{r_1r_2}{}_{}{}^{i}=\mathrm{\Gamma }_{r_1r_2i},\text{and}\mathrm{\Gamma }_{r_1r_2}{}_{}{}^{\alpha }=\mathrm{\Gamma }_{r_1r_2a}.$$

The curvature tensor is given by:

$$R_{r_1r_2r_3r_4}=e_{r_1}\mathrm{\Gamma }_{r_2r_3r_4}e_{r_2}\mathrm{\Gamma }_{r_1r_3r_4}+\mathrm{\Gamma }_{r_1r_5r_4}\mathrm{\Gamma }_{r_2r_3}{}_{}{}^{r_5}\mathrm{\Gamma }_{r_2r_5r_4}\mathrm{\Gamma }_{r_1r_3}{}_{}{}^{r_5}.$$

If $`r_5`$ indexes an element of $`𝒱`$, then $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{r_5}=0`$ by equation (3.a) while if $`r_5`$ indexes an element of $`𝒰`$, then $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{}{}_{}{}^{r_5}=0`$ by equation (3.b). Thus $`r_5`$ must index an element of $`𝒯`$ and consequently, we may express:

(3.c)
$$R_{r_1r_2r_3r_4}=e_{r_1}\mathrm{\Gamma }_{r_2r_3r_4}e_{r_2}\mathrm{\Gamma }_{r_1r_3r_4}+\mathrm{\Gamma }_{r_1ir_4}\mathrm{\Gamma }_{r_2r_3}{}_{}{}^{i}\mathrm{\Gamma }_{r_2ir_4}\mathrm{\Gamma }_{r_1r_3}{}_{}{}^{i}.$$

Thus by equation (3.a), quadratic terms in $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$ can only appear in equation (3.c) if $`r_1`$, $`r_2`$, $`r_3`$, and $`r_4`$ all index elements of $`𝒰`$. The only other non-zero curvatures occur when exactly one of $`r_\nu `$ indexes an element of $`𝒯`$ and the remaining $`r_\nu `$ index elements of $`𝒰`$. We may therefore compute the proof by computing:

$`R(U_a,U_b,U_c,T_i)=U_a\mathrm{\Gamma }_{bci}U_b\mathrm{\Gamma }_{aci}=\frac{1}{2}(\stackrel{~}{\psi }_{acbi}\stackrel{~}{\psi }_{bcai})`$

$`=\frac{1}{3}(\stackrel{~}{R}_{abic}^{(2)}+\stackrel{~}{R}_{aibc}^{(2)}\stackrel{~}{R}_{baic}^{(2)}\stackrel{~}{R}_{biac}^{(2)})`$

$`=\frac{1}{3}(2\stackrel{~}{R}_{abic}^{(2)}\stackrel{~}{R}_{iabc}^{(2)}\stackrel{~}{R}_{ibca}^{(2)})`$ $`=\frac{1}{3}(2\stackrel{~}{R}_{abic}^{(2)}+\stackrel{~}{R}_{icab}^{(2)})=\stackrel{~}{R}_{abci}^{(2)}`$. ∎

###### Remark 3.2.

It is worth giving a very specific example. Define an inner product $`g`$ on $`^6`$ whose non-zero components are, up to the usual $`_2`$ symmetries given by:

$`g(U_1,U_1)=2u_2t_2,g(U_2,U_2)=2u_1t_1,g(U_1,U_2)=u_1u_2,`$
$`g(U_1,V_1)=g(U_2,V_2)=g(T_1,T_1)=g(T_2,T_2)=1.`$
This manifold has signature $`(4,2)`$. It is spacelike Jordan Osserman nilpotent of order $`3`$. It is not timelike Jordan Osserman. Furthermore, it is curvature homogeneous up to order $`0`$ as defined by Kowalski, Tricerri, and Vanhecke .

## Acknowledgments

Research of P. Gilkey partially supported by the NSF (USA) and MPI (Leipzig). Research of S. Nikčević partially supported by the Dierks Von Zweck Stiftung (Essen), DAAD (Germany) and MM 1646 (Srbija). It is a pleasant task to thank Professor E. García–Río for helpful discussions on this matter.