Related papers: Existence of generalized totally umbilic 2-spheres…

We discuss existence and classification of totally umbilic surfaces in the model geometries of Thurston and the Berger spheres. We classify such surfaces in $H^2 \times R$, $S^2 \times R$ and the Sol group. We prove nonexistence in the…

We study curvature functionals for immersed 2-spheres in non-compact, three-dimensional Riemannian manifold $(M,h)$ without boundary. First, under the assumption that $(M,h)$ is the euclidean 3-space endowed with a semi-perturbed metric…

We consider surfaces in ${\mathbb R}^3$ of type ${\mathbb S}^2$ which minimize the Willmore functional with prescribed isoperimetric ratio. The existence of smooth minimizers was proved by Schygulla (Archive Rational Mechanics and Analysis,…

We show that, for each $n\ge 3$, there exists a smooth Riemannian metric $g$ on a punctured sphere $\mathbb{S}^n\setminus \{x_0\}$ for which the associated length metric extends to a length metric $d$ of $\mathbb{S}^n$ with the following…

This paper resolves a long-standing open problem by providing a classification of Willmore $2$-spheres in $S^n$. We show that any such $2$-sphere is either totally isotropic--originating from the projection of a special twistor curve in the…

In this note we consider homogeneous Willmore surfaces in $S^{n+2}$. The main result is that a homogeneous Willmore two-sphere is conformally equivalent to a homogeneous minimal two-sphere in $S^{n+2}$, i.e., either a round two-sphere or…

The author proves that there is an open non empty set of metrics on any 3-manifold such that there exists a family of stably embedded minimal 2-spheres whose area is unbounded. This generalizes the work of T. Colding and W. Minicozzi who…

We study the umbilic points of Willmore surfaces in codimension 1 from the viewpoint of the conformal Gauss map. We first study the local behaviour of the conformal Gauss map near umbilic curves and prove that they are geodesics up to a…

In 1982, S.-T. Yau conjectured that there exist four distinct embedded minimal two-spheres in any manifold diffeomorphic to $S^3$. Wang-Zhou confirmed this conjecture for Riemannian three-spheres when the metric is bumpy or has positive…

In this paper, we prove that the $3$-sphere endowed with an arbitrary Riemannian metric either contains at least two embedded minimal $2$-spheres or admits an optimal foliation by $2$-spheres. This generalizes recent results by…

We prove that under some assumptions on the mean curvature the set of umbilical points of an immersed surface in a $3$-dimensional space form has positive measure. In case of an immersed sphere our result can be seen as a generalization of…

We prove a quantitative rigidity result for almost constant mean curvature spheres in $\mathbb{R}^3$. Under a sub--two--sphere Willmore bound and a small $L^2$--CMC defect, we show that an almost--CMC surface is close to the round sphere,…

The Ricci flow on the 2-sphere with marked points is shown to converge in all three stable, semi-stable, and unstable cases. In the stable case, the flow was known to converge without any reparametrization, and a new proof of this fact is…

We prove that in the three dimensional sphere with a bumpy metric or a metric with positive Ricci curvature, there exist at least four distinct embedded minimal two-spheres. This confirms a conjecture of S. T. Yau in 1982 for bumpy metrics…

We show that for all $n \geq 2$, there exists a doubling linearly locally contractible metric space $X$ that is topologically a $n$-sphere such that every weak tangent is isometric to $\R^n$ but $X$ is not quasisymmetrically equivalent to…

Constrained Willmore surfaces are critical points of the Willmore functional under conformal variations. As shown in [5] one can associate to any conformally immersed constrained Willmore torus f a compact Riemann surface \Sigma, such that…

In this paper, we prove the strong Morse inequalities for the area functional in the space of embedded tori and spheres in the three sphere. As a consequence, we prove that in the three dimensional sphere with positive Ricci curvature,…

In this paper we construct Ricci-positive metrics on the connected sum of products of arbitrarily many spheres provided the dimensions of all but one sphere in each summand are at least 3. There are two new technical theorems required to…

Counter-examples to the famous conjecture of Caratheodory, as well as the bound on umbilic index proposed by Hamburger, are constructed with respect to Riemannian metrics that are arbitrarily close to the flat metric on Euclidean 3-space.…

The question of existence of umbilical points, in the CR sense, on compact, three dimensional, strictly pseudoconvex CR manifolds was raised in the seminal paper by S.-S. Chern and J. K. Moser in 1974. In the present paper, we consider…