Limit Surfaces of Riemann Examples
The family of embedded, singly periodic minimal surfaces of Riemann have as limit-surfaces the helicoid, the catenoid, a single plane, or an infinite set of equally-spaced parallel planes.
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arXiv subjects
Wayne Rossman
Publications and source records attributed to Wayne Rossman.
Constructing mean curvature 1 surfaces in $H^3$ with irregular ends
With the developments of the last decade on complete constant mean curvature 1 (CMC 1) surfaces in the hyperbolic 3-space $H^3$, many examples of such surfaces are now known. However, most of the known examples have regular ends. (An end is irregular, resp. regular, if the hyperbolic Gauss map of the surface has an essential singularity, resp. at most a pole, there.) There are some known surfaces with irregular ends, but they are all either reducible or of infinite total curvature. (The surface is reducible if and only if the monodromy of the secondary Gauss map can be simultaneously diagonalized.) Up to now there have been no known complete irreducible CMC 1 surfaces in $H^3$ with finite total curvature and irregular ends. The purpose of this paper is to construct countably many 1-parameter families of genus zero CMC 1 surfaces with irregular ends and finite total curvature, which have either dihedral or Platonic symmetries. For all the examples we produce, we show that they have finite total curvature and irregular ends. For the examples with dihedral symmetry and the simplest example with tetrahedral symmetry, we show irreducibility. Moreover, we construct a genus one CMC 1 surface with four irregular ends, which is the first known example with positive genus whose ends are all irregular.
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Period problems for mean curvature one surfaces in $H^3$ (with application to surfaces of low total curvature)
We review recent results on classifying complete constant mean curvature 1 (CMC 1) surfaces in hyperbolic 3-space with low total curvature. There are two natural notions of "total curvature" -- one is the total absolute curvature, which is the integral over the surface of the absolute value of the Gaussian curvature, and the other is the dual total absolute curvature, which is the total absolute curvature of the dual CMC 1 surface. Here we discuss results on both notions (proven in two other papers by the authors), and we introduce new results as well.
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The Morse Index of Wente Tori
We find various lower and upper bounds for the index of Wente tori that contain a continuous family of planar principal curves. We then prove a result that gives an algorithm for computing the index sharply.
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Mean curvature one surfaces in hyperbolic space, and their relationship to minimal surfaces in Euclidean space
We describe local similarities and global differences between minimal surfaces in Euclidean 3-space and constant mean curvature 1 surfaces in hyperbolic 3-space. We also describe how to solve global period problems for constant mean curvature 1 surfaces in hyperbolic 3-space, and we give an overview of recent results on these surfaces. We include computer graphics of a number of examples.
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Minimal surfaces with planar boundary curves
We consider compact connected minimal surfaces, with a pair of boundary curves (not necessarily convex) in distinct planes, that have least-area amongst all orientable surfaces with the same boundary. When the planes containing these two boundary curves are either parallel or sufficiently close to parallel, and when the boundary curves themselves are sufficiently close to each other, we draw specific conclusions about the geometry and topology of the surfaces. We also strength the following result: Let $M$ be any compact minimal annulus with two planar boundary curves of diameters $d_1$ and $d_2$ in parallel planes $P_1$ and $P_2$; if the distance between $P_1$ and $P_2$ is $h$, then the inequality $h \leq {3/2}\max\{d_1,d_2\}$ is satisfied. We strength it by removing the assumption that $M$ is an annulus and by showing that the stronger conclusion $h \leq \max\{d_1,d_2\}$ holds. We also include a similar result for nonminimal constant mean curvature surfaces.
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Minimal Surfaces with Catenoid Ends
In this paper, we use the conjugate surface construction to prove the existence of certain non-periodic symmetric immersed minimal surfaces. These surfaces have finite total curvature and embedded catenoid ends, and they have positive genus yet maintain the symmetry of their genus-zero counterparts constructed by Jorge-Meeks and Xu.
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Minimal surfaces in $R^3$ with dihedral symmetry
We construct new examples of immersed minimal surfaces with catenoid ends and finite total curvature, of both genus zero and higher genus. In the genus zero case, we classify all such surfaces with at most $2n+1$ ends, and with symmetry group the natural $\bfZ_2$ extension of the dihedral group $D_n$. The surfaces are constructed by proving existence of the conjugate surfaces. We extend this method to cases where the conjugate surface of the fundamental piece is noncompact and is not a graph over a convex plane domain.
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On embeddedness of area-minimizing disks, and an application to constructing complete minimal surfaces
Let $α$ be a polygonal Jordan curve in $\bfR^3$. We show that if $α$ satisfies certain conditions, then the least-area Douglas-Radó disk in $\bfR^3$ with boundary $α$ is unique and is a smooth graph. As our conditions on $α$ are not included amongst previously known conditions for embeddedness, we are enlarging the set of Jordan curves in $\bfR^3$ which are known to be spanned by an embedded least-area disk. As an application, we consider the conjugate surface construction method for minimal surfaces. With our result we can apply this method to a wider range of complete catenoid-ended minimal surfaces in $\bfR^3$.
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Constant mean curvature surfaces with two ends in hyperbolic space
We investigate the close relationship between minimal surfaces in Euclidean 3-space and constant mean curvature 1 surfaces in hyperbolic 3-space. Just as in the case of minimal surfaces in Euclidean 3-space, the only complete connected embedded constant mean curvature 1 surfaces with two ends in hyperbolic space are well-understood surfaces of revolution -- the catenoid cousins. In contrast to this, we show that, unlike the case of minimal surfaces in Euclidean 3-space, there do exist complete connected immersed constant mean curvature 1 surfaces with two ends in hyperbolic space that are not surfaces of revolution -- the genus 1 catenoid cousins. The genus 1 catenoid cousins are of interest because they show that, although minimal surfaces in Euclidean 3-space and constant mean curvature 1 surfaces in hyperbolic 3-space are intimately related, there are essential differences between these two sets of surfaces (when the surfaces are considered globally). The proof we give of existence of the genus 1 catenoid cousins is a mathematically rigorous verification that the results of a computer experiment are sufficiently accurate to imply existence.
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CMC tori of revolution in $\mathbb{S}^3$: additional data on the spectra of their Jacobi operators
We prove a theorem about elliptic operators with symmetric potential functions, defined on a function space over a closed loop. The result is similar to a known result for a function space on an interval with Dirichlet boundary conditions. These theorems provide accurate numerical methods for finding the spectra of those operators over either type of function space. As an application, we numerically compute the Morse index of constant mean curvature tori of revolution in the unit 3-sphere $\mathbb{S}^3$, confirming that every such torus has Morse index at least five, and showing that other known lower bounds for this Morse index are close to optimal.
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A loop group formulation for constant curvature submanifolds of pseudo-Euclidean space
We give a loop group formulation for the problem of isometric immersions with flat normal bundle of a simply connected pseudo-Riemannian manifold $M_{c,r}^m$, of dimension $m$, constant sectional curvature $c \neq 0$, and signature $r$, into the pseudo-Euclidean space $\real_s^{m+k}$, of signature $s\geq r$. In fact these immersions are obtained canonically from the loop group maps corresponding to isometric immersions of the same manifold into a pseudo-Riemannian sphere or hyperbolic space $S_s^{m+k}$ or $H_s^{m+k}$, which have previously been studied. A simple formula is given for obtaining these immersions from those loop group maps.
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Morse index of constant mean curvature tori of revolution in the 3-sphere
We compute lower bounds for the Morse index and nullity of constant mean curvature tori of revolution in the three-dimensional unit sphere. In particular, all such tori have index at least five, with index growing at least linearly with respect to the number of the surfaces' bulges, and the index of such tori can be arbitrarily large.
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Flat fronts in hyperbolic 3-space and their caustics
After Galvez, Martinez and Milan discovered a (Weierstrass-type) holomorphic representation formula for flat surfaces in hyperbolic 3-space, the first, third and fourth authors here gave a framework for complete flat fronts with singularities in H^3. In the present work we broaden the notion of completeness to weak completeness, and of front to p-front. As a front is a p-front and completeness implies weak completeness, the new framework and results here apply to a more general class of flat surfaces. This more general class contains the caustics of flat fronts -- shown also to be flat by Roitman (who gave a holomorphic representation formula for them) -- which are an important class of surfaces and are generally not complete but only weakly complete. Furthermore, although flat fronts have globally defined normals, caustics might not, making them flat fronts only locally, and hence only p-fronts. Using the new framework, we obtain characterizations for caustics.
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The first bifurcation point for Delaunay nodoids
We give two numerical methods for computing the first bifurcation point for Delaunay nodoids. With regard to methods for constructing constant mean curvature surfaces, we conclude that the bifurcation point in the analytic method of Mazzeo-Pacard is the same as a limiting point encountered in the integrable systems method of Dorfmeister-Pedit-Wu.
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Singularities of flat fronts in hyperbolic 3-space
It is well-known that the unit cotangent bundle of any Riemannian manifold has a canonical contact structure. A surface in a Riemannian 3-manifold is called a (wave) front if it is the projection of a Legendrian immersion into the unit cotangent bundle. We shall give easily-computable criteria for a singular point on a front to be a cuspidal edge or a swallowtail. Using this, we shall prove that generically flat fronts in the hyperbolic 3-space admit only cuspidal edges and swallowtails. Moreover, we will show that every complete flat front (which is not rotationally symmetric) has associated parallel surfaces whose singularities consist of only cuspidal edges and swallowtails.
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Infinite Periodic Discrete Minimal Surfaces Without Self-Intersections
A triangulated piecewise-linear minimal surface in Euclidean 3-space defined using a variational characterization is critical for area amongst all continuous piecewise-linear variations with compact support that preserve the simplicial structure. We explicitly construct examples of such surfaces that are embedded and are periodic in three independent directions of Euclidean 3-space.
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Lower bounds for Morse index of constant mean curvature tori
We give three lower bounds for the Morse index of a constant mean curvature torus in Euclidean 3-space in terms of its spectral genus g. The first two lower bounds grow linearly in g and are stronger for smaller values of g, while the third grows quadratically in g but is weaker for smaller values of g.
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