Dynamics of elastic wires: preserving area without nonlocality

Abstract We derive an $$H^{-1}$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msup> <mml:mi>H</mml:mi> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>-</mml:mo> <mml:mn>1</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:msup> </mml:math> -gradient flow of the elastic energy which preserves the enclosed area of evolving planar curves. For this new sixth-order evolution equation, we prove a global existence result. Additionally, by penalizing the length, we show convergence to an area constrained critical point of the elastic energy.