Classification of ancient cylindrical mean curvature flows and the Mean Convex Neighborhood Conjecture

Abstract: We resolve the Mean Convex Neighborhood Conjecture for mean curvature flows in all dimensions and for all types of cylindrical singularities. Specifically, we show that if the tangent flow at a singular point is a multiplicity-one cylinder, then in a neighborhood of that point the flow is mean-convex, its time-slices arise as level sets of a continuous function, and all nearby tangent flows are cylindrical. Moreover, we establish a canonical neighborhood theorem near such points, which characterizes the flow via local models. We also obtain a more uniform version of the Mean Convex Neighborhood Conjecture, which only requires closeness to a cylinder at some initial time and yields a quantitative version of this structural description. Our proof relies on a complete classification of ancient, asymptotically cylindrical flows. We prove that any such flow is non-collapsed, convex, rotationally symmetric, and belongs to one of three canonical families: ancient ovals, the bowl soliton, or the flying wing translating solitons. Central to our method is a refined asymptotic analysis and a novel \emph{leading mode condition,} together with a new ``induction over thresholds'' argument. In addition, our approach provides a full parameterization of the space of asymptotically cylindrical flows and gives a new proof of the existence of flying wing solitons. Our method is independent of prior work and, together with our prequel paper, this work is largely self-contained.