A new monotone quantity in mean curvature flow implying sharp homotopic criteria

Abstract A new monotone quantity in graphical mean curvature flows of higher codimensions is identified in this work. The submanifold deformed by the mean curvature flow is the graph of a map between Riemannian manifolds, and the quantity is monotone increasing under the area-decreasing condition of the map. The flow provides a natural homotopy of the corresponding map and leads to sharp criteria regarding the homotopic class of maps between complex projective spaces, and maps from spheres to complex projective spaces, among others.