Compact minimal surfaces in the Berger spheres (Q766135): Difference between revisions

In [Ann. Math. (2) 92, 335--374 (1970; Zbl 0205.52001)], \textit{H. B. Lawson, jun.} proved that every compact surface except the projective space can be minimally immersed in the \(3\)-sphere. The method that Lawson used to construct compact minimal surfaces has been successfully applied to other spaces and other kinds of surfaces such as constant mean curvature ones. In this paper, the author constructs compact minimal surfaces of arbitrary Euler characteristic in the Berger sphere. The Berger spheres are homogeneous Riemannian \(3\)-manifolds with isometry group of dimension \(4\) which are, roughly speaking, \(3\)-spheres endowed with a family of deformations of the round metric. The author proves that for given nonnegative integer \(g \geq 0\), there exists a compact embedded minimal surface of genus \(g\) in the Berger spheres. He also shows that for every pair of natural numbers \(n\) and \(m\), with \(n\) odd, there exists a non-orientable compact minimal surface with Euler characteristic \(1-mn\). As a consequence from these results, the author proves that every compact surface but the projective space can be minimally immersed into the Berger spheres. Lawson's construction of compact minimal surfaces in the round \(3\)-sphere is based on the property of geodesic reflection. A geodesic reflection across a geodesic \(\gamma\) is the map that sends a point to its opposite point on a geodesic through the point which meets the geodesic \(\gamma\) orthogonally. However the reflection over a geodesic of the Berger spheres is not in general an ambient isometry. This is the main difficulty in constructing such a compact minimal surface in the Berger spheres. Finally the author constructs, via the Daniel correspondence, new examples of constant mean curvature surfaces in \(S^2 \times {\mathbb R}\) , \({\mathbb H}^2 \times {\mathbb R}\) and the Heisenberg group with many symmetries.