English

Free boundary and capillary minimal surfaces in spherical caps II: Low energy

Differential Geometry 2025-12-25 v1

Abstract

This is the second of two articles in which we investigate the geometry of free boundary and capillary minimal surfaces in balls BRS3B_R\subset\mathbb{S}^3. In this article, we find monotonicity formulae which imply that capillary minimal surfaces maximise a certain modified energy in their conformal orbit (preserving BRB_R). In the hemisphere, this energy is precisely the capillary energy. We also prove a partial characterisation by index for capillary minimal surfaces in the hemisphere, analogous to Urbano's characterisation of the Clifford torus.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2512.20857,
  title  = {Free boundary and capillary minimal surfaces in spherical caps II: Low energy},
  author = {Jonathan J. Zhu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.20857},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

49 pages, 2 figures; comments welcome!