On soap bubbles and isoperimetric regions in non-compact symmetric spaces. I (Q1312820): Difference between revisions

Let \(M\) be a Riemannian manifold. A soap bubble in \(M\) is a closed hypersurface of constant mean curvature; an isoparametric region is a compact region which attains a minimal \((n-1)\)-dimensional Hausdorff measure of the boundary among all compact regions of the \(n\)-dimensional Hausdorff measure. In the present work the author analyzes the existence aspect of soap bubbles and isoparametric regions in non-compact symmetric spaces. If \(M= E^ n\) the Euclidean space, the existence of homothety transformations allows to normalize the constant of mean curvatures to be equal to one, and the spheres of radius 1 are examples of soap bubbles in \(E^ n\). The normalization of values of the mean curvature is not possible in other spaces; therefore the actual range of values of the constant mean curvature of all soap bubbles is a very important aspect that needs to be considered while analyzing the existence of soap bubbles. In this paper the mean curvature of a hypersurface is redefined to be the trace of the second fundamental form. In Theorem 1 the author proves that for every non-compact Riemannian symmetric space \(M\) there exists a lower bound \(b(M)\), such that the mean curvature of any soap bubble in \(M\), or the regular part of the boundary of an isoparametric region in \(M\) is strictly greater than \(b(M)\). Moreover, when \(M\) is irreducible, \(b(M)\) is computed in terms of the root system of \(M\). In Theorem 2 it is shown that if the rank of the symmetric space is less than or equal to 2, then every value greater than \(b(M)\) can be realized as the mean curvature of a spherical soap bubble in \(M\). The case of rank 2 and Euclidean factor of dimension different from 1 is considered in Theorem 3, where the existence of infinitely many congruence classes of immersed, spherical soap bubbles in \(M\) is proved.