A Survey of the Elastic Flow of Curves and Networks

摘要

We collect and present in a unified way several results in recent years about the elastic flow of curves and networks, trying to draw the state of the art of the subject. In particular, we give a complete proof of global existence and smooth convergence to critical points of the solution of the elastic flow of closed curves in R-2. In the last section of the paper we also discuss a list of open problems.