Free boundary flows by powers of the Gauss curvature in the unit ball

Abstract

We study smooth compact strictly convex hypersurfaces in the unit ball that meet the support sphere orthogonally and evolve by the $\alpha$-Gauss curvature flow $\partial_tX=-K^\alpha\nu$, $\alpha>0$. We prove that the solution remains strictly convex, becomes extinct in finite time and contracts to a single point on the support sphere. If $\alpha >\frac{1}{n+2}$, we apply a Cayley-type conformal map that sends the extinction point to the origin of a Euclidean half-space and then normalize the enclosed half-space volume. The resulting normalized hypersurfaces converge smoothly to the unit hemisphere. The proof combines boundary identities for the spherical free boundary, a boundary-adapted Tso estimate, an almost-monotonicity formula for a half-space entropy, and uniform curvature estimates for the normalized flow.