A weak-strong uniqueness principle for the Mullins-Sekerka equation

Fischer, J; Hensel, S; Laux, T; Simon, T.M.

Abstract

We establish a weak-strong uniqueness principle for the two-phase Mullins-Sekerka equation in the plane: As long as a classical solution to the evolution problem exists, any weak De Giorgi type varifold solution (see for this notion the recent work of Stinson and the second author, Arch. Ration. Mech. Anal. 248, 8, 2024) must coincide with it. In particular, in the absence of geometric singularities such weak solutions do not introduce a mechanism for (unphysical) non-uniqueness. We also derive a stability estimate with respect to changes in the data. Our method is based on the notion of relative entropies for interface evolution problems, a reduction argument to a perturbative graph setting (which is the only step in our argument exploiting in an essential way the planar setting), and a stability analysis in this perturbative regime relying crucially on the gradient flow structure of the Mullins-Sekerka equation.