We characterize all compact embedded stable minimal capillary surfaces with capillary angle close to either 0 or π that are supported on a complete embedded minimal surface with finite total curvature that is not an affine plane. Moreover, we characterize all compact embedded weakly stable minimal capillary surfaces with capillary angle close to either 0 or π that are supported on a closed surface whose mean curvature is positive and has no degenerate maxima. An important ingredient in our work are curvature estimates for sequences of weakly stable minimal capillary surfaces with capillary angles tending to 0 or π that enable us to analyze the tangential limits of such sequences at suitable scales.

We construct a sequence {Sigma(l)}(infinity)(t=1) of closed, axially symmetric surfaces Sigma(l )subset of R-3 that converges to unit sphere in W-2,W-p boolean AND C-1 for every p is an element of [1, infinity) and such that, for every l, integral(Sigma l ) H-Sigma l - root 16 pi |Sigma(l) | < 0, where H Sigma(l ) is the mean curvature of Sigma(l ).This shows that unless additional convexity are imposed, the Minkowski inequality with optimal constant fails even for perturbations of a round sphere that are small in W-2,W-p boolean AND C-1.

We prove that weakly stable solutions of Serrin's problem are compact and therefore round balls.

Let (M, g) be an n-dimensional asymptotically flat Riemannian manifold with nonnegative scalar curvature that admits a noncompact area-minimizing hypersurface Sigma subset of M. In the case where n = 3, O. Chodosh and the first-named author have proven that (M, g) is necessarily isometric to Euclidean space, confirming a conjecture of R. Schoen. In this paper, we extend this result to dimension 3 < n <= 7 provided that Sigma arises as a limit of isoperimetric surfaces. By contrast, we prove that when 3 < n <= 7, there is no such result for general noncompact area-minimizing Sigma subset of M, even when additional assumptions on the stability of Sigma are imposed.

Let (M, g) be an asymptotically flat Riemannian 3-manifold. We provide a short new proof based on Lyapunov-Schmidt reduction of the existence of an asymptotic foliation of (M, g) by constant mean curvature spheres. In the case where the scalar curvature of (M, g) is non-negative, we prove that the leaves of this foliation are the only large stable constant mean curvature spheres that enclose the center of (M, g). This had been shown previously under more restrictive assumptions and using a different method by S. Ma. We also include a new proof of the fact that the geometric center of mass of the foliation agrees with the Hamiltonian center of mass of (M, g).

We apply the method of Lyapunov-Schmidt reduction to study large area-constrained Willmore surfaces in Riemannian 3-manifolds asymptotic to Schwarzschild. In particular, we prove that the end of such a manifold is foliated by distinguished area-constrained Willmore spheres. The leaves are the unique area-constrained Willmore spheres with large area, non-negative Hawking mass, and distance to the center of the manifold at least a small multiple of the area radius. Unlike previous related work, we only require that the scalar curvature satisfies mild asymptotic conditions. We also give explicit examples to show that these conditions on the scalar curvature are necessary.

The Riemannian Penrose inequality is a fundamental result in mathematical relativity. It has been a long-standing conjecture of G. Huisken that an analogous result should hold in the context of extrinsic geometry. In this paper, we resolve this conjecture and show that the exterior mass m of an asymptotically flat support surface S⊂ℝ^3 with nonnegative mean curvature and outermost free boundary minimal surface D is bounded in terms of m≥√(|D|/π). If equality holds, then the unbounded component of S∖∂ D is a half-catenoid. In particular, this extrinsic Penrose inequality leads to a new characterization of the catenoid among all complete embedded minimal surfaces with finite total curvature. To prove this result, we study minimal capillary surfaces supported on S that minimize the free energy and discover a quantity associated with these surfaces that is nondecreasing as the contact angle increases.

Let $(M,g)$ be a complete, connected, non-compact Riemannian three-manifold with non-negative Ricci curvature satisfying $Ric\geq\varepsilon\,\operatorname{tr}(Ric)\,g$ for some $\varepsilon>0$. In this note, we give a new proof based on inverse mean curvature flow that $(M,g)$ is either flat or has non-Euclidean volume growth. In conjunction with results of J. Lott and of M.-C. Lee and P. Topping, this gives an alternative proof of a conjecture of R. Hamilton recently proven by A. Deruelle, F. Schulze, and M. Simon using Ricci flow.

Let $(M,g)$ be a Riemannian $3$-manifold that is asymptotic to Schwarzschild. We study the existence of large area-constrained Willmore spheres $\Sigma \subset M$ with non-negative Hawking mass and inner radius $\rho$ dominated by the area radius $\lambda$. If the scalar curvature of $(M,g)$ is non-negative, we show that no such surfaces with $\log \lambda \ll \rho$ exist. This answers a question of G. Huisken.

Building on previous works of Bray, of Miao, and of Almaraz, Barbosa, and de Lima, we develop a doubling procedure for asymptotically flat half-spaces ( M , g ) with horizon boundary Σ⊂ M and mass m∈ℝ . If 3≤ (M)≤ 7 , ( M , g ) has non-negative scalar curvature, and the boundary ∂ M is mean-convex, we obtain the Riemannian Penrose-type inequality m≥( 1/2) ^n/n-1 ( |Σ |/ω _n-1) ^n-2/n-1 as a corollary. Moreover, in the case where ∂ M is not totally geodesic, we show how to construct local perturbations of ( M , g ) that increase the scalar curvature. As a consequence, we show that equality holds in the above inequality if and only if the exterior region of ( M , g ) is isometric to a Schwarzschild half-space. Previously, these results were only known in the case where (M)=3 and Σ is a connected free boundary hypersurface.

In this article, we prove the Riemannian Penrose inequality for asymptotically flat manifolds with non-compact boundary whose asymptotic region is modelled on a half-space. Such spaces were initially considered by Almaraz, Barbosa and de Lima in 2014. In order to prove the inequality, we develop a new approximation scheme for the weak free boundary inverse mean curvature flow, introduced by Marquardt in 2012, and establish the monotonicity of a free boundary version of the Hawking mass. Our result also implies a non-optimal Penrose inequality for asymptotically flat support surfaces in $\mathbb{R}^3$ and thus sheds some light on a conjecture made by Huisken.

We construct a sequence {Σ_ℓ}_ℓ=1^∞ of closed, axially symmetric surfaces Σ_ℓ⊂ℝ^3 that converges to the unit sphere in W^2,p∩ C^1 for every p∈[1,∞) and such that, for every ℓ, ∫_Σ_ℓH_Σ_ℓ-√(16 π |Σ_ℓ|)<0 where H_Σ_ℓ is the mean curvature of Σ_ℓ. This shows that the Minkowski inequality with optimal constant fails even for perturbations of a round sphere that are small in W^2,p∩ C^1 unless additional convexity assumptions are imposed.

We refine the Lyapunov–Schmidt analysis from our recent paper (Eichmair and Koerber in Large area-constrained Willmore surfaces in asymptotically Schwarzschild 3-manifolds. arXiv preprint arXiv:2101.12665 , 2021) to study the geometric center of mass of the asymptotic foliation by area-constrained Willmore surfaces of initial data for the Einstein field equations. If the scalar curvature of the initial data vanishes at infinity, we show that this geometric center of mass agrees with the Hamiltonian center of mass. By contrast, we show that the positioning of large area-constrained Willmore surfaces is sensitive to the distribution of the energy density. In particular, the geometric center of mass may differ from the Hamiltonian center of mass if the scalar curvature does not satisfy additional asymptotic symmetry assumptions.

We study a free boundary isometric embedding problem for abstract Riemannian two-manifolds with the topology of the disc. Under the assumption of positive Gauss curvature and geodesic curvature of the boundary being equal to one, we show that every such disc may be isometrically embedded into the Euclidean three-space $$\mathbb {R}^3$$ such that the image of the boundary meets the unit sphere $$\mathbb {S}^2$$ orthogonally. We also show that the embedding is unique up to rotations and reflections through planes containing the origin. Finally, we define a new Brown-York type quasi-local mass for certain free boundary surfaces and discuss its positivity.

We study the area preserving Willmore flow in an asymptotic region of an asymptotically flat manifold which is $C^{3}-$close to Schwarzschild. It was shown by Lamm, Metzger and Schulze that such an end is foliated by spheres of Willmore type. In this paper, we prove that the leaves of this foliation are stable under small area preserving $W^{2,2}-$perturbations with respect to the area preserving Willmore flow. This implies, in particular, that the leaves are strict local area preserving maximizers of the Hawking mass with respect to the $W^{2,2}-$topology.

Given an elliptic diffusion operator L defined on a compact and connected manifold (possibly with a convex boundary in a suitable sense) with an L-invariant measure m, we introduce the non-linear \(p-\)operator \(L_p\), generalizing the notion of the \(p-\)Laplacian. Using techniques of the intrinsic \(\varGamma _2\)-calculus, we prove the sharp estimate \(\lambda \ge (p-1)\pi _p^p/D^p\) for the principal eigenvalue of \(L_p\) with Neumann boundary conditions under the assumption that L satisfies the curvature-dimension condition BE(0, N) for some \(N\in [1,\infty )\). Here, D denotes the intrinsic diameter of L. Equality holds if and only if L satisfies BE(0, 1). We also derive the lower bound \(\pi ^2/D^2+a/2\) for the real part of the principal eigenvalue of a non-symmetric operator \(L=\varDelta _g+X\cdot \nabla \) satisfying \({\text {BE}}(a,\infty )\).