A proof of the Lawson conjecture for minimal tori embedded in $\S3$
Fernando A. A. Pimentel
备注：
20 pages, 8 figures, typos corrected (see esp. Lem. 4.2) and clarifications added. We refer esp. to a more straightforward proof of Lemma 3.2, to Rem.3.2, to the statement of Prop. 3.1 and to the definition of the function $Φ_{n,α}^λ$
A peculiarity of the geometry of the euclidean 3-sphere $\S3$ is that it allows for the existence of compact without boundary minimally immersed surfaces. Despite a wealthy of examples of such surfaces, the only known tori minimally embedded in $\S3$ are the ones congruent to the Clifford torus. In 1970 Lawson conjectured that the Clifford torus is, up to congruences, the only torus minimally embedded in $\S3$. We prove here Lawson conjecture to be true. Two results are instrumental to this work, namely, a characterization of the Clifford torus in terms of its first eingenfunctions (\cite{MR}) and the assumption of a "two-piece property" to these tori: every equator divides a torus minimally embedded in $\S3$ in exactly two connected components (\cite{Rs}).
Extremal spectral properties of the Lawson tori are studied. A Lawson torus carries an extremal metric for some eigenvalue of the Laplace-Beltrami operator. The main result of this paper is that the number of this eigenvalue is expressed in terms of fundamental tones of auxiliary periodic Sturm-Liouville problems.
We give a topological classification of Lawson's bipolar minimal surfaces corresponding to his $ξ$- and $η$-family. Therefrom we deduce upper as well as lower bounds on the area of these surfaces, and find that they are not embedded.
Using Takahashi theorem we propose an approach to extend known families of minimal tori in spheres. As an example, the well-known two-parametric family of Lawson tau-surfaces including tori and Klein bottles is extended to a three-parametric family of tori and Klein bottles minimally immersed in spheres. Extremal spectral properties of the metrics on these surfaces are investigated. These metrics include i) both metrics extremal for the first non-trivial eigenvalue on the torus, i.e. the metric on the Clifford torus and the metric on the equilateral torus and ii) the metric maximal for the fir…
We prove that a closed embedded minimal surface in the round three-sphere which satisfies the symmetries of a Lawson surface and has the same genus is congruent to the Lawson surface.
In this paper, we show that an embedded Weingarten surface in S^3 of genus 1 must be rotationally symmetric, provided that certain structure conditions are satisfied. The argument involves an adaptation of our proof of Lawson's Conjecture for minimal tori.
Extremal spectral properties of Lawson tau-surfaces are investigated. The Lawson tau-surfaces form a two-parametric family of tori or Klein bottles minimally immersed in the standard unitary three-dimensional sphere. A Lawson tau-surface carries an extremal metric for some eigenvalue of the Laplace-Beltrami operator. Using theory of the Lamé equation we find explicitly these extremal eigenvalues.
Recently Penskoi [J. Geom. Anal. 25 (2015), 2645-2666, arXiv:1308.1628] generalized the well known two-parametric family of Lawson tau-surfaces $τ_{r,m}$ minimally immersed in spheres to a three-parametric family $T_{a,b,c}$ of tori and Klein bottles minimally immersed in spheres. It was remarked that this family includes surfaces carrying all extremal metrics for the first non-trivial eigenvalue of the Laplace-Beltrami operator on the torus and on the Klein bottle: the Clifford torus, the equilateral torus and surprisingly the bipolar Lawson Klein bottle $\tildeτ_{3,1}$. In the present paper …
We map out the moduli space of Lawson symmetric constant mean curvature surfaces in the 3-sphere of genus $g>1$ by flowing numerically from Delaunay tori with even lobe count via the generalized Whitham flow.
The i-th eigenvalue of the Laplacian on a surface can be viewed as a functional on the space of Riemannian metrics of fixed area. Extremal points of these functionals correspond to surfaces admitting minimal isometric immersions into spheres. Recently, critical metrics for the first eigenvalue were classified on tori and on Klein bottles. The present paper is concerned with extremal metrics for higher eigenvalues on these surfaces. We apply a classical construction due to Lawson. The ranks of the extremal eigenvalues are obtained for the bipolar surfaces $\tilde τ_{r,k}$ of the corresponding L…
The nullity of a minimal submanifold $M\subset S^{n}$ is the dimension of the nullspace of the second variation of the area functional. That space contains as a subspace the effect of the group of rigid motions $SO(n+1)$ of the ambient space, modulo those motions which preserve $M$, whose dimension is the Killing nullity $kn(M)$ of $M$. In the case of 2-dimensional tori $M$ in $S^{3}$, there is an additional naturally-defined 2-dimensional subspace; the dimension of the sum of the action of the rigid motions and this space is the natural nullity $nnt(M)$. In this paper we will study minimal to…
We prove that any constant mean curvature embedded torus in the three dimensional sphere is axially symmetric, and use this to give a complete classification of such surfaces for any given value of the mean curvature.
We introduce the moduli space of spectral curves of constant mean curvature (\cmc\hspace{-5pt}) cylinders of finite type in the round unit 3-sphere. The subset of spectral curves of mean-convex Alexandrov embedded cylinders is explicitly determined using a combination of integrable systems and geometric analysis techniques. We prove that these cylinders are surfaces of revolution. As a consequence all mean-convex Alexandrov embedded {\sc{cmc}} tori in the 3-sphere are surfaces of revolution.
We give a local analytic characterization that a minimal surface in the 3-sphere $\, \ES^3 \subset \R^4$ defined by an irreducible cubic polynomial is one of the Lawson's minimal tori. This provides an alternative proof of the result by Perdomo (\emph{Characterization of order 3 algebraic immersed minimal surfaces of $S^3$},Geom. Dedicata 129 (2007), 23--34).
We present a deformation for constant mean curvature tori in the 3-sphere. We show that the moduli space of equivariant constant mean curvature tori in the 3-sphere is connected, and we classify the minimal, the embedded, and the Alexandrov embedded tori therein. We conclude with an instability result.
By works of Schoen-Yau and Gromov-Lawson any Riemannian manifold with nonnegative scalar curvature and diffeomorphic to a torus is isometric to a flat torus. Gromov conjectured subconvergence of tori with respect to a weak Sobolev type metric when the scalar curvature goes to $0$. We prove flat and intrinsic flat subconvergence to a flat torus for noncollapsing sequences of $3$-dimensional tori $M_j$ that can be realized as graphs of certain functions defined over flat tori satisfying a uniform upper diameter bound and scalar curvature bounds of the form $R_{g_{M_j}} \geq -1/j$. We also show t…
The nonlocal $s$-fractional minimal surface equation for $Σ= \partial E$ where $E$ is an open set in $R^N$ is given by $$ H_Σ^ s (p) := \int_{R^N} \frac {χ_E(x) - χ_{E^c}(x)} {|x-p|^{N+s}}\, dx \ =\ 0 \quad \text{for all } p\in Σ. $$ Here $0<s<1$, $χ$ designates characteristic function, and the integral is understood in the principal value sense. The classical notion of minimal surface is recovered by letting $s\to 1$. In this paper we exhibit the first concrete examples (beyond the plane) of nonlocal $s-$minimal surfaces. When $s$ is close to $1$, we first construct a connected embedded $s$-m…
In this paper are given examples of tori T2 embedded in R3 with all their principal lines dense. These examples are obtained by stereographic projection of deformations of the Clifford torus in S3.
Using the Lawson's existence theorem of minimal surfaces and the symmetries of the Hopf fibration, we will construct symmetric embedded closed minimal surfaces in the three dimensional sphere. These surfaces contain the Clifford torus, the Lawson's minimal surfaces, and seven new minimal surfaces with genera 9, 25, 49, 121, 121, 361 and 841. We will also discuss the relation between such surfaces and the maximal extendable group actions on subsurfaces of the three dimensional sphere.
We give a simple proof of the local version of a result of R. Bryant, stating that any 3-dimensional Riemannian manifold can be isometrically embedded as a special Lagrangian submanifold in a Calabi-Yau manifold. We refine the theorem proving that a certain class of one-parameter families of metrics on a 3-torus can be isometrically embedded in a Calabi-Yau manifold as a one-parameter family of special Lagrangian submanifolds. We use our examples of one-parameter families to show that the semi-flat metric on the mirror manifold proposed be N. Hitchin is not necessarily Ricci-flat in dimension …
In this short article we investigate the topology of the moduli space of two-convex embedded tori $S^{n-1}\times S^1\subset \mathbb{R}^{n+1}$. We prove that for $n \geq 3$ this moduli space is path-connected, and that for $n = 2$ the connected components of the moduli space are in bijective correspondence with the knot classes associated to the embeddings. Our proof uses a variant of mean curvature flow with surgery developed in our earlier article (arXiv:1607.05604) where neck regions are deformed to tiny strings instead of being cut out completely, an approach which preserves the global topo…
For each integer m>1 and l>0 we construct a pair of compact embedded minimal surfaces of genus 1+4m(m-1)l. These surfaces desingularize the m Clifford tori meeting each other along a great circle at the angle of π/m. They are invariant under a finite group of screw motions and have no reflection symmetry across a great sphere.
We construct a sequence of compact, oriented, embedded, two-dimensional surfaces of genus one into Euclidean 3-space with prescribed, almost constant, mean curvature of the form $H(X)=1+{A}{|X|^{-γ}}$ for $|X|$ large, when $A<0$ and $γ\in(0,2)$. Such surfaces are close to sections of unduloids with small necksize, folded along circumferences centered at the origin and with larger and larger radii. The construction involves a deep study of the corresponding Jacobi operators, an application of the Lyapunov-Schmidt reduction method and some variational argument.
We describe a 3-parametric family $\mathcal{K}$ of properly embedded minimal tori with four parallel ends in quotients of $\mathbb{R}^3$ by two independent translations, which we will call the \textit{Standard Examples.} These surfaces generalize the examples given by Karcher, Meeks and Rosenberg in \cite{ka4,ka6,mr3}. $\mathcal{K}$ can be endowed with a natural structure of a self-conjugated 3-dimensional real analytic manifold diffeomorphic to $\mathbb{R}\times(\mathbb{R}^2-\{(\pm 1,0)\})$ whose degenerate limits are the catenoid, the helicoid, the simply and doubly periodic Scherk minimal s…
A family of embedded rotationally symmetric tori in the Euclidean 3-space consisting of two opposite signed constant mean curvature surfaces that converge as varifolds to a double round sphere is constructed. Using complete elliptic integrals, it is shown that their Willmore energy lies strictly below $8π$. Combining such a strict inequality with previous works by Keller-Mondino-Rivière and Mondino-Scharrer allows to conclude that for every isoperimetric ratio there exists a smoothly embedded torus minimising the Willmore functional under isoperimetric constraint, thus completing the solution …
This is the second of a series of two papers where we construct embedded Willmore tori with small area constraint in Riemannian three-manifolds. In both papers the construction relies on a Lyapunov-Schmidt reduction, the difficulty being the Möbius degeneration of the tori. In the first paper the construction was performed via minimization, here by Morse Theory; to this aim we establish new geometric expansions of the derivative of the Willmore functional on exponentiated small Clifford tori degenerating, under the action of the Möbius group, to small geodesic spheres with a small handle. By u…
In this survey, we discuss various aspects of the minimal surface equation in the three-sphere S^3. After recalling the basic definitions, we describe a family of immersed minimal tori with rotational symmetry. We then review the known examples of embedded minimal surfaces in S^3. Besides the equator and the Clifford torus, these include the Lawson and Kapouleas-Yang examples, as well as a new family of examples found recently by Choe and Soret. We next discuss uniqueness theorems for minimal surfaces in S^3, such as the work of Almgren on the genus 0 case, and our recent solution of Lawson's …
We prove that every smoothly immersed 2-torus of $\mathbb{R}^4$ can be approximated, in the C0-sense, by immersed polyhedral Lagrangian tori. In the case of a smoothly immersed (resp. embedded) Lagrangian torus of $\mathbb{R}^4$, the surface can be approximated in the C1-sense by immersed (resp. embedded) polyhedral Lagrangian tori. Similar statements are proved for isotropic 2-tori of $\mathbb{R}^{2n}$.
We construct embedded Willmore tori with small area constraint in Riemannian three-manifolds under some curvature condition used to prevent Möbius degeneration. The construction relies on a Lyapunov-Schmidt reduction; to this aim we establish new geometric expansions of exponentiated small symmetric Clifford tori and analyze the sharp asymptotic behavior of degenerating tori under the action of the Möbius group. In this first work we prove two existence results by minimizing or maximizing a suitable reduced functional, in particular we obtain embedded area-constrained Willmore tori (or, equiva…
Let $\mathcal{K}$ be the space of properly embedded minimal tori in quotients of $\R^3$ by two independent translations, with any fixed (even) number of parallel ends. After an appropriate normalization, we prove that $\mathcal{K}$ is a 3-dimensional real analytic manifold that reduces to the finite coverings of the examples defined by Karcher, Meeks and Rosenberg in \cite{ka4,ka6,mr3}. The degenerate limits of surfaces in $\mathcal{K}$ are the catenoid, the helicoid and three 1-parameter families of surfaces: the simply and doubly periodic Scherk minimal surfaces and the Riemann minimal examp…
In this paper, we discuss complete minimal immersions in $\mathbb{R}^N$($N\geq4$) with finite total curvature and embedded planar ends. First, we prove nonexistence for the following cases: (1) genus 1 with 2 embedded planar ends, (2) genus $\neq4$, hyperelliptic with 2 embedded planar ends like the Lagrangian catenoid. Then we show the existence of embedded minimal spheres in $\mathbb{R}^4$ with 3 embedded planar ends. Moreover, we construct genus $g$ examples in $\mathbb{R}^4$ with $d$ embedded planar ends such that $g\geq 1$ and $g+2\leq d\leq 2g+1$. These examples include a family of embed…
Extending work of Kapouleas and Yang, for any integers $N \geq 2$, $k, \ell \geq 1$, and $m$ sufficiently large, we apply gluing methods to construct in the round $3$-sphere a closed embedded minimal surface that has genus $k\ell m^2(N-1)+1$ and is invariant under a $D_{km} \times D_{\ell m}$ subgroup of $O(4)$, where $D_n$ is the dihedral group of order $2n$. Each such surface resembles the union of $N$ nested topological tori, all small perturbations of a single Clifford torus $\mathbb{T}$, that have been connected by $k\ell m^2 (N-1)$ small catenoidal tunnels, with $k \ell m^2$ tunnels join…
For each integer $k \geq 2$, we apply gluing methods to construct sequences of minimal surfaces embedded in the round $3$-sphere. We produce two types of sequences, all desingularizing collections of intersecting Clifford tori. Sequences of the first type converge to a collection of $k$ Clifford tori intersecting with maximal symmetry along these two circles. Near each of the circles, after rescaling, the sequences converge smoothly on compact subsets to a Karcher-Scherk tower of order $k$. Sequences of the second type desingularize a collection of the same $k$ Clifford tori supplemented by an…
We construct distinguished elements in the embedded contact homology (and monopole Floer homology) of a 3-torus, associated with Lagrangian tori in symplectic 4-manifolds and their isotopy classes. They turn out not to be new invariants, instead they repackage the Gromov (and Seiberg-Witten) invariants of various torus surgeries. We then recover a result of Morgan-Mrowka-Szabó on product formulas for the Seiberg-Witten invariants along 3-tori.
