Singularities of the hyperbolic elastic flow: convergence, quantization and blow-ups

Abstract We study the elastic flow of closed curves and of open curves with clamped boundary conditions in the hyperbolic plane. While global existence and convergence toward critical points for initial data with sufficiently small energy is already known, this study pioneers an investigation into the flow’s singular behavior. We prove a convergence theorem without assuming smallness of the initial energy, coupled with a quantification of potential singularities: Each singularity carries an energy cost of at least 8. Moreover, the blow-ups of the singularities are explicitly classified. A further contribution is an explicit understanding of the singular limit of the elastic flow of $$\lambda $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:mi>λ</mml:mi></mml:math> -figure-eights, a class of curves that previously served in showing sharpness of the energy threshold 16 for the smooth convergence of the elastic flow of closed curves.