Calculus of Variations and Geometric Measure Theory

Hypersurfaces with prescribed-mean-curvature: existence and properties

Costante Bellettini

created by scharrer on 02 Jul 2022
modified on 03 Jul 2022

20 jul 2022 -- 14:00   [open in google calendar]

Agenda: Get-together (30 min), presentation Costante Bellettini (60 min), questions and discussions (30 min).

Registration required for new participants. Please go to our seminar website (allow one work day for processing).

Abstract.

Let $N$ be a compact Riemannian manifold of dimension 3 or higher, and $g$ a Lipschitz non-negative (or non-positive) function on $N$. In joint works with Neshan Wickramasekera we prove that there exists a closed hypersurface $M$ whose mean curvature attains the values prescribed by $g$. Except possibly for a small singular set (of codimension 7 or higher), the hypersurface $M$ is $C^2$ immersed and two-sided (it admits a global unit normal); the scalar mean curvature at $x$ is $g(x)$ with respect to a global choice of unit normal. More precisely, the immersion is a quasi-embedding, namely the only non-embedded points are caused by tangential self-intersections: around any such non-embedded point, the local structure is given by two disks, lying on one side of each other, and intersecting tangentially (as in the case of two spherical caps touching at a point). A special case of PMC (prescribed-mean-curvature) hypersurfaces is obtained when $g$ is a constant, in which the above result gives a CMC (constant-mean-curvature) hypersurface for any prescribed value of the mean curvature.