arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Brian White.
We prove that the density of a topologically nontrivial, area-minimizing hypercone with an isolated singularity must be greater than the square root of 2. The Simons' cones show that this is the best possible constant. If one of the components of the complement of the cone has nontrivial kth homotopy group, we prove a better bound in terms of k; that bound is also best possible. The proofs use mean curvature flow.
We prove that for each positive integer g, there exists a complete minimal surface of genus g that is properly embedded in three-dimensional euclidean space and that is asymptotic to the helicoid.
For every genus g, we prove that S^2 x R contains complete, properly embedded, genus-g minimal surfaces whose two ends are asymptotic to helicoids of any prescribed pitch. We also show that as the radius of the S^2 tends to infinity, these examples converge smoothly to complete, properly embedded minimal surfaces in Euclidean 3-space R^3 that are helicoidal at infinity. In a companion paper, we prove that helicoidal surfaces in R^3 of every prescribed genus occur as such limits of examples in S^2 x R.
We use Ilmanen's elliptic regularization to prove that for an initially smooth mean convex hypersurface in Euclidean n-space moving by mean curvature flow, the surface is very nearly convex in a spacetime neighborhood of every singularity. Previously this was known only (i) for n < 7, and (ii) for arbitrary n up to the first singular time.
The entropy of a hypersurface is a geometric invariant that measures complexity and is invariant under rigid motions and dilations. It is given by the supremum over all Gaussian integrals with varying centers and scales. It is monotone under mean curvature flow, thus giving a Lyapunov functional. Therefore, the entropy of the initial hypersurface bounds the entropy at all future singularities. We show here that not only does the round sphere have the lowest entropy of any closed singularity, but there is a gap to the second lowest.
For any prescribed closed subset of a line segment in Euclidean 3-space, we construct a sequence of minimal disks that are properly embedded in an open solid cylinder around the segment and that have curvatures blowing up precisely at the points of the closed set.
We prove that an m-dimensional minimal variety in a Riemannian manifold cannot touch the boundary at a point where the sum of the smallest m principal curvatures is greater than 0. We also prove an analogous result for varieties with bounded mean curvature.
Spectral clustering uses the global information embedded in eigenvectors of an inter-item similarity matrix to correctly identify clusters of irregular shape, an ability lacking in commonly used approaches such as k-means and agglomerative clustering. However, traditional spectral clustering partitions items into hard clusters, and the ability to instead generate fuzzy item assignments would be advantageous for the growing class of domains in which cluster overlap and uncertainty are important. Korenblum and Shalloway [Phys. Rev. E 67, 056704 (2003)] extended spectral clustering to fuzzy clustering by introducing the principle of uncertainty minimization. However, this posed a challenging non-convex global optimization problem that they solved by a brute-force technique unlikely to scale to data sets having more than O(10^2) items. Here we develop a new method for solving the minimization problem, which can handle data sets at least two orders of magnitude larger. In doing so, we elucidate the underlying structure of uncertainty minimization using multiple geometric representations. This enables us to show how fuzzy spectral clustering using uncertainty minimization is related to and generalizes clustering motivated by perturbative analysis of almost-block-diagonal matrices. Uncertainty minimization can be applied to a wide variety of existing hard spectral clustering approaches, thus transforming them to fuzzy methods.
We prove that if a complete, properly embedded, finite-topology minimal surface in S^2 x R contains a line, then its ends are asymptotic to helicoids, and that if the surface is an annulus, it must be a helicoid.
We generalize the following result of White: Suppose $N$ is a compact, strictly convex domain in $\RR^3$ with smooth boundary. Let $Σ$ be a compact 2-manifold with boundary. Then a generic smooth curve $Γ\cong \partialΣ$ in $\partial N$ bounds an odd or even number of embedded minimal surfaces diffeomorphic to $Σ$ according to whether $Σ$ is or is not a union of disks. First, we prove that the parity theorem holds for any compact riemannian 3-manifold $N$ such that $N$ is strictly mean convex, $N$ is homeomorphic to a ball, $\partial N$ is smooth, and $N$ contains no closed minimal surfaces. We then further relax the hypotheses by allowing $N$ to be weakly mean convex and to have piecewise smooth boundary. We extend the parity theorem yet further by showing that, under an additional hypothesis, it remains true for minimal surfaces with prescribed symmetries. The parity theorems are used in an essential way to prove the existence of embedded genus-$g$ helicoids in $\SS^2\times \RR$. We give a very brief outline of this application. (The full argument will appear elsewhere.)
We prove: a properly embedded, genus-one minimal surface that is asymptotic to a helicoid and that contains two straight lines must intersect that helicoid precisely in those two lines. In particular, the two lines divide the surface into two connected components that lie on either side of the helicoid. We prove an analogous result for periodic helicoid-like surfaces. We also give a simple condition guaranteeing that an immersed minimal surface with finite genus and bounded curvature is asymptotic to a helicoid at infinity.
We give simple conditions on an ambient manifold that are necessary and sufficient for isoperimetric inequalities (for submanifolds) to hold.
We prove under suitable hypotheses that convergence of integral varifolds implies convergence of associated mod 2 flat chains and subsequential convergence of associated integer-multiplicity rectifiable currents. The convergence results imply restrictions on the kinds of singularities that can occur in mean curvature flow.
We prove by variational means the existence of a complete, properly embedded, genus-one minimal surface in R^3 that is asymptotic to a helicoid at infinity. We also prove existence of surfaces that are asymptotic to a helicoid away from the helicoid's axis, but that have infinitely many handles arranged periodically along the axis. Finally, we prove some new properties of such helicoid-like surfaces.
This paper proves that classical minimal surfaces of arbitrary topological type with total boundary curvature at most 4πmust be smoothly embedded. Related results are proved for varifolds and for soap film surfaces.
This article describes the mean curvature flow, some of the discoveries that have been made about it, and some unresolved questions.
We prove (without using Federer's structure theorem) that a finite-mass flat chain over any coefficient group is rectifiable if and only if almost all of its 0-dimensional slices are rectifiable. This implies that every flat chain of finite mass and finite size is rectifiable. It also leads to a simple necessary and sufficient condition on the coefficient group in order for every finite-mass flat chain to be rectifiable.
Shoen and Uhlenbeck showed that ``tangent maps'' can be defined at singular points of energy minimizing maps. Unfortunately these are not unique, even for generic boundary conditions. Examples are discussed which have isolated singularities with a continuum of distinct tangent maps.