52.1DGMar 24
The exterior derivative and the mean value equality in $\mathbb{R}^n$Daniel Fadel, Henrique N. Sá Earp, Tomás S. R. Silva
This survey revisits classical results in vector calculus and analysis by exploring a generalised perspective on the exterior derivative, interpreting it as a measure of "infinitesimal flux". This viewpoint leads to a higher-dimensional analogue of the Mean Value Theorem, valid for differential $k$-forms, and provides a natural formulation of Stokes' theorem that mirrors the exact hypotheses of the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus -- without requiring full $C^1$ smoothness of the differential form. As a numerical application, we propose an algorithm for exterior differentiation in $\mathbb{R}^n$ that relies solely on black-box access to the differential form, offering a practical tool for computation without the need for mesh discretization or explicit symbolic expressions.
39.0DGApr 6
Minimising Willmore Energy via Neural FlowEdward Hirst, Henrique N. Sá Earp, Tomás S. R. Silva
The neural Willmore flow of a closed oriented $2$-surface in $\mathbb{R}^3$ is introduced as a natural evolution process to minimise the Willmore energy, which is the squared $L^2$-norm of mean curvature. Neural architectures are used to model maps from topological $2d$ domains to $3d$ Euclidean space, where the learning process minimises a PINN-style loss for the Willmore energy as a functional on the embedding. Training reproduces the expected round sphere for genus $0$ surfaces, and the Clifford torus for genus $1$ surfaces, respectively. Furthermore, the experiment in the genus $2$ case provides a novel approach to search for minimal Willmore surfaces in this open problem.