A report on an article of Calegari, Marques and Neves about counting minimal surfaces. An idea of a proof is included using the concept of a laminar measure.
A classical result by Marston Morse asserts that on some ellipsoids of ${\mathbb R}^3$ there exists exactly 3 closed and simple geodesics. The goal of this presentation is to prove that this rigidity result does not extend to higher dimensions and, more precisely, on any smooth closed riemannian manifod of arbitrary dimension between 3 and 7 there exists infinitely many closed embedded minimal surfaces. We are going to present the origins of this theorem as well as it's proof given recently by Antoine Song.
Let $M$ be a closed hyperbolic 3-manifold that admits no infinitesimal conformally-flat deformations. Examples of such manifolds were constructed by Kapovich. Then if $g$ is a Riemannian metric on $M$ with scalar curvature greater than or equal to $-6$, we find lower bounds for the areas of stable immersed minimal surfaces $Σ$ in $M$. Our bounds improve the closer $Σ$ is to being homotopic to a totally geodesic surface in the hyperbolic metric. We also consider a functional introduced by Calegari-Marques-Neves that is defined by an asymptotic count of minimal surfaces in $(M,g)$. We show this …
For almost all Riemannian metrics (in the $C^\infty$ Baire sense) on a closed manifold $M^{n+1}$, $3\leq (n+1)\leq 7$, we prove that there is a sequence of closed, smooth, embedded, connected minimal hypersurfaces that is equidistributed in $M$. This gives a quantitative version of the main result of \cite{irie-marques-neves}, by Irie and the first two authors, that established denseness of minimal hypersurfaces for generic metrics. As in \cite{irie-marques-neves}, the main tool is the Weyl Law for the Volume Spectrum proven by Liokumovich and the first two authors in \cite{liokumovich-marques…
In this paper, we prove that the Morse index of a multiplicity one, smooth, min-max minimal hypersurface is generically equal to the dimension of the homology class detected by the families used in the construction. This confirms part of the program (\cite{marques-icm}, \cite{marques-neves-cycles}, \cite{marques-neves-index}, \cite{neves-icm}) proposed by the authors with the goal of developing a Morse theory for the area functional.
We prove a Weyl Law for the phase transition spectrum based on the techniques of Liokumovich-Marques-Neves. As an application we give phase transition adaptations of the proofs of the density and equidistribution of minimal hypersufaces for generic metrics by Irie-Marques-Neves and Marques-Neves-Song, respectively. We also prove the density of separating limit interfaces for generic metrics in dimension 3, based on the recent work of Chodosh-Mantoulidis, and for generic metrics on manifolds containing only separating minimal hypersurfaces, e.g. $H_n(M,\mathbb{Z}_2) = 0$, for $4 \leq n+1 \leq 7…
In this paper, we study the shape of the min-max minimal hypersurface produced by Almgren-Pitts-Schoen-Simon \cite{AF62, AF65, P81, SS81} in a Riemannian manifold $(M^{n+1}, g)$ of positive Ricci curvature for all dimensions. The min-max hypersurface has a singular set of Hausdorff codimension $7$. We characterize the Morse index, area and multiplicity of this singular min-max hypersurface. In particular, we show that the min-max hypersurface is either orientable and has Morse index one, or is a double cover of a non-orientable stable minimal hypersurface. As an essential technical tool, we pr…
We show that in a closed 3-manifold with a generic metric of positive Ricci curvature, there are minimal surfaces of arbitrary large Morse index, which partially confirms a conjecture by F. Marques and A. Neves. We prove this by analyzing the lamination structure of the limit of minimal surfaces with bounded Morse index.
The Allen-Cahn equation is a semilinear PDE which is deeply linked to the theory of minimal hypersurfaces via a singular limit. We prove curvature estimates and strong sheet separation estimates for stable solutions (building on recent work of Wang-Wei) of the Allen-Cahn equation on a 3-manifold. Using these, we are able to show for generic metrics on a 3-manifold, minimal surfaces arising from Allen-Cahn solutions with bounded energy and bounded Morse index are two-sided and occur with multiplicity one and the expected Morse index. This confirms, in the Allen-Cahn setting, a strong form of th…
We address the one-parameter minmax construction, via Allen--Cahn energy, that has recently lead to a new proof of the existence of a closed minimal hypersurface in an arbitrary compact Riemannian manifold $N^{n+1}$ with $n\geq 2$ (see Guaraco's 2018 work). We obtain the following multiplicity-$1$ result: if the Ricci curvature of $N$ is positive then the minmax Allen--Cahn solutions concentrate around a multiplicity-$1$ hypersurface, that may have a singular set of dimension $\leq n-7$. This result is new for $n\geq 3$ (for $n=2$ it is also implied by the recent work by Chodosh--Mantoulidis).…
Using min-max theory, we show that in any closed Riemannian manifold of dimension at least 3 and at most 7, there exist infinitely many smoothly embedded closed minimal hypersurfaces. It proves a conjecture of S.-T. Yau. This paper builds on the methods developed by F. C. Marques and A. Neves.
In 1960s, Almgren initiated a program to find minimal hypersurfaces in compact manifolds using min-max method. This program was largely advanced by Pitts and Schoen-Simon in 1980s when the manifold has no boundary. In this paper, we finish this program for general compact manifold with nonempty boundary. As a result, we prove the existence of a smooth embedded minimal hypersurface with free boundary in any compact smooth Euclidean domain. An application of our general existence result combined with the work of Marques and Neves shows that for any compact Riemannian manifolds with nonnegative R…
In this paper, we show that a closed manifold $M^{n+1} (n \geq 7)$ endowed with a $C^\infty$-generic (Baire sense) metric contains infinitely many singular minimal hypersurfaces with optimal regularity. Moreover, for $2 \leq n \leq 6$, our argument also implies the denseness of the minimal hypersurfaces realizing min-max widths for generic metrics. This partially supports equidistribution of the minimal hypersurfaces realizing min-max widths conjectured by F.C. Marques, A. Neves and A. Song.
E. Calabi and J. Cao showed that a closed geodesic of least length in a two-sphere with nonnegative curvature is always simple. Using min-max theory, we prove that for some higher dimensions, this result holds without assumptions on the curvature. More precisely, in a closed $(n+1)$-manifold with $2 \leq n \leq 6$, a least area closed minimal hypersurface exists and any such hypersurface is embedded. As an application, we give a short proof of the fact that if a closed three-manifold $M$ has scalar curvature at least $6$ and is not isometric to the round three-sphere, then $M$ contains an embe…
While studying the existence of closed geodesics and minimal hypersurfaces in compact manifolds, the concept of width was introduced in different contexts. Generally, the width is realized by the energy of the closed geodesics or the volume of minimal hypersurfaces, which are found by the Minimax argument. Recently, Marques and Neves used the $p$-width to prove the existence of infinite many minimal hypersurfaces in compact manifolds with positive Ricci curvature. However, whether the $p$-width can be realized as the volume of minimal hypersurfaces is not known yet. We introduced the concept o…
Let $(M,g)$ be a complete $(n+1)$-dimensional Riemannian manifold with $2\leq n\leq 6$. Our main theorem generalizes the solution of S.-T. Yau's conjecture on the abundance of minimal surfaces and builds on a result of M. Gromov. Suppose that $(M,g)$ has bounded geometry, or more generally is thick at infinity. Then the following dichotomy holds for the space of closed hypersurfaces in $M$: either there are infinitely many saddle points of the $n$-volume functional, or there is none. Additionally, we give a new short proof of the existence of a finite volume minimal hypersurface in finite volu…
We study global variational properties of the space of solutions to $-\varepsilon^2Δu + W'(u)=0$ on any closed Riemannian manifold $M$. Our techniques are inspired by recent advances in the variational theory of minimal hypersurfaces and extend a well-known analogy with the theory of phase transitions. First, we show that solutions at the lowest positive energy level are either stable or obtained by min-max and have index 1. We show that if $\varepsilon$ is not small enough, in terms of the Cheeger constant of $M$, then there are no interesting solutions. However, we show that the number of mi…