Complete families of embedded high genus CMC surfaces in the 3-sphere (with an appendix by Steven Charlton)

Abstract

For every $g \gg 1$, we show the existence of a complete and smooth family of closed constant mean curvature surfaces $f_\varphi^g,$ $ \varphi \in [0, \tfrac{\pi}{2}],$ in the round $3$-sphere deforming the Lawson surface $\xi_{1, g}$ to a doubly covered geodesic 2-sphere with monotonically increasing Willmore energy. To construct these we use an implicit function theorem argument in the parameter $t= \tfrac{1}{2(g+1)}$. This allows us to give an iterative algorithm to compute the power series expansion of the DPW potential and area of $f_\varphi^g$ at $t= 0$ explicitly. In particular, we obtain for large genus Lawson surfaces $\xi_{1,g}$ % due to the real analytic dependence of its area and DPW potential on $t,$ a scheme to explicitly compute the coefficients of the power series in $t$ in terms of multiple polylogarithms. Remarkably, the third order coefficient of the area expansion is identified with $\tfrac{9}{4}\zeta(3),$ where $\zeta$ is the Riemann $\zeta$ function (while the first and second order term were shown to be $\log(2)$ and $0$ respectively in \cite{HHT}).