Minimal Graphs and Graphical Mean Curvature Flow in $M \times \mathbb R$

Abstract: In this paper, we investigate the problem of finding minimal graphs in $M^n\times\mathbb R$ with general boundary conditions using a variational approach. We look at so called generalized solutions of the Dirichlet Problem that minimize a functional adapted from the area functional. We construct barriers to show that for certain conditions on our boundary data, $\phi(x)$, the solutions obtain the boundary data $\phi(x)$. Following Oliker-Ural'tseva we also consider solutions $u^{\epsilon}$ of a perturbed mean curvature flow for $\epsilon > 0$. We show that there are subsequences $\epsilon_i$ where $u^{\epsilon_i}$ converges to a function $u$ satisfying the mean curvature flow, and subsequences $u(\cdot, t_i)$ converge to a generalized solution $\bar u$ of the Dirichlet problem. Furthermore, $\bar u$ depends only on the choice of sequence $\epsilon_i$.