The number of minimal surfaces bounded by Enneper's wire
Abstract
Enneper's wire, the image of the circle of radius under Enneper's surface, bounds exactly three minimal surfaces for between 1 and , and these three surfaces depend continuously on . The other two surfaces (besides Enneper's surface) are absolute minima of area among disk-type surfaces bounded by Enneper's wire. These surfaces each have a unique horizontal tangent plane, whose height can be computed from , and they are invariant under reflections in the planes and . These two surfaces have positive second variation of area, and depend continuously on . This result solves three open problems from the list in Nitche's 1989 book. Enneper's wire is the only Jordan curve bounding more than one minimal surface for which a specific bound on the number of minimal surfaces bounded by is known.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1506.03064,
title = {The number of minimal surfaces bounded by Enneper's wire},
author = {Michael Beeson},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1506.03064},
year = {2016}
}
Comments
This paper has been withdrawn by the author. The claim that the surfaces all contain two crossed horizontal lines is actually false. The problems posed by Nitsche remain open