Stable CMC integral varifolds of codimension $1$: regularity and compactness

Abstract

We give two structural conditions on a codimension $1$ integral $n$-varifold with first variation locally summable to an exponent $p>n$ that imply the following: whenever each orientable portion of the $C^{1}$-embedded part of the varifold (which is non-empty by the Allard regularity theory) is stationarity and the $C^{2}$-immersed part of it is stable with respect to the area functional for volume preserving deformations, its support, except possibly on a closed set of codimension $7$, is an immersed constant-mean-curvature (cmc) hypersurface of class $C^{2}$ that can fail to be embedded only at points where locally the support is the union of two $C^{2}$ embedded cmc disks with only tangential intersection. Both structural conditions are necessary for the conclusions and involve only those parts of the varifold that are made up of embedded $C^{1, \alpha}$-regular pieces coming together in a regular fashion, making them easy to check in principle. We show also that any family of codimension 1 integral varifolds satisfying these structural and variational hypotheses as well as locally uniform mass and mean curvature bounds is compact in the varifold topology. Our results generalize both the regularity theory of the second author (for stable minimal hypersurfaces) and the regularity theory of Schoen--Simon, for hypersurfaces satisfying a priori a smallness hypothesis on the singular set in addition to the variational hypotheses). Corollaries of the main varifold regularity theorem are obtained for sets of locally finite perimeter, which generalize the regularity theory of Gonzalez--Massari--Tamanini for boundaries that locally minimize perimeter subject to the fixed enclosed volume constraint.