Analysis aspects of Willmore surfaces
Abstract
We found a new formulation to the Euler-Lagrange equation of the Willmore functional for immersed surfaces in . This new formulation of Willmore equation appears to be of divergence form, moreover, the non-linearities are made of jacobians. Additionally to that, if denotes the mean curvature vector of the surface, this new form writes where is a well defined locally invertible self-adjoint operator. These 3 facts have numerous consequences in the analysis of Willmore surfaces. One first consequence is that the long standing open problem to give a meaning to the Willmore Euler-Lagrange equation for immersions having only bounded second fundamental form is now solved. We then establish the regularity of weak Willmore surfaces for any for which the Gauss map is continuous : . This is based on the proof of an regularity result for weak Willmore surfaces. We establish then a weak compactness result for Willmore surfaces of energy less than for every . This theorem is based on a point removability result we prove for Wilmore surfaces in . This result extends to arbitrary codimension a result that E.Kuwert and R.Schaetzle established for surfaces in . Finally, we deduce from this point removability result the strong compactness, modulo the M\"obius group action, of Willmore tori below the energy level in dimensions 3 and 4. The dimension 3 case was already solved in a previous work.
Cite
@article{arxiv.math/0612526,
title = {Analysis aspects of Willmore surfaces},
author = {Riviere Tristan},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:math/0612526},
year = {2007}
}