On the non-degenerate and degenerate generic singularities formed by mean curvature flow

Abstract: In this paper we study a neighborhood of generic singularities formed by mean curvature flow (MCF). We limit our consideration to the singularities modelled on $\mathbb{S}^3\times\mathbb{R}$ because, compared to the cases $\mathbb{S}^k\times \mathbb{R}^{l}$ with $l\geq 2$, the present case has the fewest possibilities to be considered. For various possibilities, we provide a detailed description for a small, but fixed, neighborhood of singularity, and prove that a small neighborhood of the singularity is mean convex, and the singularity is isolated. For the remaining possibilities, we conjecture that an entire neighborhood of the singularity becomes singular at the time of blowup, and present evidences to support this conjecture. A key technique is that, when looking for a dominating direction for the rescaled MCF, we need a normal form transformation, as a result, the rescaled MCF is parametrized over some chosen curved cylinder, instead over a standard straight one. This is a long paper. The introduction is carefully written to present the key steps and ideas.