Minimal Surfaces of Finite Genus: Classification, Dynamics and Laminations

Abstract

This article explains a program to study complete and properly embedded minimal surfaces in $\mathbb{R}^3$ developed jointly with W.H. Meeks and A. Ros in the last three decades. It follows closely the structure of my invited ICM talk with the same title and supplies details and references to the original papers. After recalling the role of the classical Riemann minimal examples in minimal surface theory, we explain our four-step classification of properly embedded minimal surfaces of genus zero and infinite topology in $\mathbb{R}^3$: the periodic case, the quasi-periodicity of the two-limit-ended case, the non-existence of one-limit-ended examples, and the final classification. We then review the lamination techniques (limit-leaf stability, local removable singularity, and singular structure theorems), the dynamics theorem, bounds on topology and index for complete embedded minimal surfaces of finite total curvature, and the resolution of the embedded Calabi-Yau problem for finite genus and countably many ends. Throughout we emphasize the interaction between topology, flux, curvature estimates, and the structure of related moduli spaces. We end this article with a list of some open problems.