Cohomogeneity one Hermann actions and backward mean curvature flows

Abstract: Principal orbits of cohomogeneity one Hermann actions form a natural class of equifocal hypersurfaces in symmetric spaces of compact type. Based on Kollross's classification of cohomogeneity one actions on irreducible symmetric spaces of compact type, we obtain the time evolution of the squared norm of the shape operator and the mean curvature along the long-time solution of the backward mean curvature flows starting from their principal orbits. These results explicitly describe the authors' previous generalization of the results of Liu-Terng on backward mean curvature flows of isoparametric hypersurfaces to this class of equifocal hypersurfaces.