We study the stable norm on the first homology of a closed, non-orientable surface equipped with a Riemannian metric. We prove that in every conformal class there exists a metric whose stable norm is polyhedral. Furthermore the stable norm is never strictly convex if the first Betti number of the surface is greater than two.
We prove the existence of metrics maximizing the first eigenvalue normalized by area on closed, non-orientable surfaces assuming two spectral gap conditions. These spectral gap conditions are proved by the authors in \cite{MS3}.
In this paper, we consider a Generalized Bernstein Theorem for a type of generalized minimal surfaces, namely minimal Plateau surfaces. We show that if an orientable minimal Plateau surface is stable and has quadratic area growth in $\mathbb{R}^3 $, then it is flat.
We prove a new systolic volume lower bound for non-orientable n-manifolds, involving the stable 1-systole and the codimension 1 systole with coefficients in Z_2. As an application, we prove that Lusternik-Schnirelmann category and systolic category agree for non-orientable closed manifolds of dimension 3, extending our earlier result in the orientable case. Finally, we prove the homotopy invariance of systolic category.
We prove that if u is a bounded smooth function in the kernel of a nonnegative Schrodinger operator $-L=-(Δ+q)$ on a parabolic Riemannian manifold M, then u is either identically zero or it has no zeros on M, and the linear space of such functions is 1-dimensional. We obtain consequences for orientable, complete stable surfaces with constant mean curvature $H\in\mathbb{R}$ in homogeneous spaces $\mathbb{E}(κ,τ)$ with four dimensional isometry group. For instance, if M is an orientable, parabolic, complete immersed surface with constant mean curvature H in $\mathbb{H}^2\times\mathbb{R}$, then $…
The aim of this work is to adapt the complex analytic methods originating in modern Oka theory to the study of non-orientable conformal minimal surfaces in $\mathbb{R}^n$ for any $n\ge 3$. These methods, which we develop essentially from the first principles, enable us to prove that the space of conformal minimal immersions of a given bordered non-orientable surface to $\mathbb{R}^n$ is a real analytic Banach manifold, obtain approximation results of Runge-Mergelyan type for conformal minimal immersions from non-orientable surfaces, and show general position theorems for non-orientable conform…
We prove that any $C^2$ complete, orientable, connected, stable area-stationary surface in the sub-Riemannian Heisenberg group $\mathbb{H}^1$ is either a Euclidean plane or congruent to the hyperbolic paraboloid $t=xy$.
In [20], Ros and Vergasta proved that an immersed orientable compact stable constant mean curvature surface $Σ$ with free boundary in a closed ball $B\subset\mathbb{R}^3$ must be a planar equator, a spherical cap or a surface of genus 1 with at most two boundary components. In this article, by using a modified Hersch type balancing argument, we complete their work by proving that $Σ$ cannot have genus 1.
A Killing submersion is a Riemannian submersion from a 3-manifold to a surface, both connected and orientable, whose fibres are the integral curves of a Killing vector field, not necessarily unitary. The first part of this paper deals with the classification of all Killing submersions in terms of two geometric functions, namely the bundle curvature and the length of the Killing vector field, which can be prescribed arbitrarily. In a second part, we show that if the base is compact and the submersion admits a global section, then it also admits a global minimal section. These turn out to be the…
In the 1-parameter family of Berger spheres S^3(a), a > 0 (S^3(1) is the round 3-sphere of radius 1) we classify the stable constant mean curvature spheres, showing that in some Berger spheres (a close to 0) there are unstable constant mean curvature spheres. Also, we classify the orientable compact stable constant mean curvature surfaces in S^3(a), 1/3 <= a < 1 proving that they are spheres or the minimal Clifford torus in S^3(1/3). This allows to solve the isoperimetric problem in these Berger spheres.
We compute the homotopy type of the moduli space of flat, unitary connections over aspherical surfaces, after stabilizing with respect to the rank of the underlying bundle. Over the orientable surface M^g, we show that this space has the homotopy type of the infinite symmetric product of M^g, generalizing a well-known fact for the torus. Over a non-orientable surface, we show that this space is homotopy equivalent to a disjoint union of two tori, whose common dimension corresponds to the rank of the first (co)homology group of the surface. Similar calculations are provided for products of surf…
We compute the de Rham cohomology of the weak stable foliation of the geodesic flow of a connected orientable closed hyperbolic surface with various coefficients. For most of the coefficients, we also give certain "Hodge decompositions" of the corresponding de Rham complexes, which are not obtained by the usual Hodge theory of foliations. These results are based on unitary representation theory of $\mathrm{PSL}(2,\mathbb{R})$. As an application we obtain an answer to a problem considered by Haefliger and Li around 1980.
We study the structure of the stable norm of Finsler metrics on the 2-torus with a focus to points of irrational slope. By our results, the stable norm detects KAM-tori and hyperbolicity in the geodesic flow. Moreover, we study the stable norm in some natural examples.
We prove the nonexistence of stable immersed minimal surfaces uniformly conformally equivalent to the complex plane in any complete orientable four-dimensional Riemannian manifold with uniformly positive isotropic curvature. We also generalize the same nonexistence result to higher dimensions provided that the ambient manifold has uniformly positive complex sectional curvature. The proof consists of two parts, assuming an "eigenvalue condition" on the Cauchy-Riemann operator of a holomorphic bundle, we prove (1) a vanishing theorem for these holomorphic bundles on the complex plane; (2) an exi…
In recent years, eigenvalue optimization problems have received a lot of attention, in particular, due to their connection with the theory of minimal surfaces. In the present paper we prove that on any orientable surface there exists a smooth metric maximizing the first normalized Steklov eigenvalue. For surfaces of genus zero, this has been earlier proved by A. Fraser and R. Schoen. Our approach builds upon their ideas and further developments due to R. Petrides. As a corollary, we show that there exist free boundary branched minimal immersions of an arbitrary compact orientable surface with …
The real homology of a compact, n-dimensional Riemannian manifold M is naturally endowed with the stable norm. The stable norm of a homology class is the minimal Riemannian volume of its representatives. If M is orientable the stable norm on H_{n-1}(M,R) is a homogenized version of the Riemannian (n-1)-volume. We study the differentiability properties of the stable norm at points alpha in H_{n-1}(M,R). They depend on the position of alpha with respect to the integer lattice H_{n-1}(M,Z) in H_{n-1}(M,R). In particular, we show that the stable norm is differentiable at alpha if alpha is totally …
We study stable constant mean curvature (CMC) hypersurfaces $Σ$ in slabs in a product space $M\times\r,$ where $M$ is an orientable Riemannian manifold. We obtain a characterization of stable cylinders and prove that if $Σ$ is not a cylinder then it is locally a vertical graph. Moreover, in case $M$ is $\h^n,\r^n$ or $\s_+^n$ and each of its boundary components is embedded then $Σ$ is rotationally invariant. When $M$ has dimension 2 and Gaussian curvature bounded from below by a positive constant $κ,$ we prove there is no stable CMC with free boundary connecting the boundary components of a sl…
Let $M$ be a Riemannian 3-manifold of nonnegative Ricci curvature, Ric $\geq 0.$ We suppose that $M$ is conformally flat and simply connected or more generally that it admits a conformal immersion into the standard 3-sphere. Let $Σ$ be a compact connected and orientable surface immersed in $M$ which is a stable constant mean curvature (CMC) surface or an index one minimal surface. We prove that $Σ$ is homeomorphic either to a sphere or to a torus. Moreover, in case $Σ$ is homeomorphic to a torus, then it is embedded, minimal, conformal to a flat square torus and Ric$(N)=0$ where $N$ is a unit …
We generalize the classical Henneberg minimal surface by giving an infinite family of complete, finitely branched, non-orientable, stable minimal surfaces in $\mathbb{R}^3$. These surfaces can be grouped into subfamilies depending on a positive integer (called the complexity), which essentially measures the number of branch points. The classical Henneberg surface $H_1$ is characterized as the unique example in the subfamily of the simplest complexity $m=1$, while for $m\geq 2$ multiparameter families are given. The isometry group of the most symmetric example $H_m$ with a given complexity $m\i…
Let $M$ be a closed smooth manifold. In 1999, L. Friedlander and N. Nadirashvili introduced a new differential invariant $I_1(M)$ using the first normalized nonzero eigenvalue of the Lalpace-Beltrami operator $Δ_g$ of a Riemannian metric $g$. They defined it taking the supremum of this quantity over all Riemannian metrics in each conformal class, and then taking the infimum over all conformal classes. By analogy we use $k$-th eigenvalues of $Δ_g$ to define the invariants $I_k(M)$ indexed by positive integers $k$. In the present paper the values of these invariants on surfaces are investigated.…
A result of Bangert states that the stable norm associated to any Riemannian metric on the $2$-torus $T^2$ is strictly convex. We demonstrate that the space of stable norms associated to metrics on $T^2$ forms a proper dense subset of the space of strictly convex norms on $\R^2$. In particular, given a strictly convex norm $\Norm_\infty$ on $\R^2$ we construct a sequence $<\Norm_j >_{j=1}^{\infty}$ of stable norms that converge to $\Norm_\infty$ in the topology of compact convergence and have the property that for each $r > 0$ there is an $N \equiv N(r)$ such that $\Norm_j$ agrees with $\Norm_…
The real homology of a compact Riemannian manifold $M$ is naturally endowed with the stable norm. The stable norm on $H_1(M,\mathbb{R})$ arises from the Riemannian length functional by homogenization. It is difficult and interesting to decide which norms on the finite-dimensional vector space $H_1(M,\mathbb{R})$ are stable norms of a Riemannian metric on $M$. If the dimension of $M$ is at least three, I. Babenko and F. Balacheff proved in \cite{baba} that every polyhedral norm ball in $H_1(M,\mathbb{R})$, whose vertices are rational with respect to the lattice of integer classes in $H_1(M,\mat…
We revisit Atiyah and Bott's study of Morse theory for the Yang-Mills functional over a Riemann surface, and establish new formulas for the minimum codimension of a (non-semi-stable) stratum. These results yield the exact connectivity of the natural map (C_{min} E)//G(E) --> Map^E (M, BU(n)) from the homotopy orbits of the space of central Yang-Mills connections to the classifying space of the gauge group G(E). All of these results carry over to non-orientable surfaces via Ho and Liu's non-orientable Yang-Mills theory. A somewhat less detailed version of this paper (titled "On the Yang-Mills s…