Minimal submanifolds confined in space

Abstract

Already in $\bf{R}^4$, there are many minimal hypersurfaces, yet few structural results. We show that minimal submanifolds, of any dimension and codimension, that are confined in space are very restricted. It is well-known that the half-space theorem fails already for hypersurfaces in $\bf{R}^4$, where there are many examples contained in a slab. In $\bf{R}^3$ the height of the catenoid grows at a logarithmic rate, whereas in higher dimensions the height of the catenoid remains bounded. We will see that even in high dimensions, minimal submanifolds that are confined in space must satisfy strong structural restrictions. We show that any proper minimal immersion whose height grows sublinearly must have Euclidean volume growth. A consequence is an optimal Bernstein theorem in any dimension for stable hypersurfaces with sublinearly growing height that generalizes results of Moser, Bombieri-De Giorgi-Miranda, Trudinger, Caffarelli-Nirenberg-Spruck and Ecker-Huisken. Euclidean volume growth is a powerful property and there are many other consequences.