Some Properties of the Distance Function and a Conjecture of De Giorgi

We analyse the geometric properties of the high derivatives of the distance function from a submanifold of the Euclidean space. In particular, we show some relations with the second fundamental form and its covariant derivatives of independent interest. As an application we prove a conjecture of Ennio De Giorgi on the evolution of submanifolds of the Euclidean space by the gradient of functionals depending on the derivatives of the distance function.