Triple covers and a non-simply connected surface spanning an elongated tetrahedron and beating the cone (Q1711350): Difference between revisions

One solution of the Plateau problem spanning all six edges of a regular thetrahedron is the cone [\textit{J. Taylor}, Ann. Math. 103, 489--539 (1976; Zbl 0335.49032)] if one imposes on the competitors the extra constraint that they divide the regular tetrahedron into four regions. However, it is not known whether a non-simply connected film, e.g. with ``tunnels'' connecting pairs of faces, could have less area than the cone. In this paper, the authors consider the Plateau problem for an elongated tetrahedron obtained by stretching a regular tetrahedron in the direction orthogonal to a pair of opposite edges. Reasoning as in [\textit{K. Brakke}, J. Geom. Anal. 5, 445--514 (1995; Zbl 0848.49025)] the authors construct an involved covering space $Y$ of degree 3 of the complement of tetrahedron's one-skeleton, and then adapting the techniques of [\textit{S. Amato} et al., Adv. Calc. Var. 10, 25--47 (2017; Zbl 1366.49044)] they settle the Plateau problem in BV. As an application of the covering, for a sufficiently elongated tetrahedron they show the existence of a configuration with genus spanning all six edges of the tetrahedron having area strictly less that the area of conelike configurations. Finally, the comparison of the used approach with the one by Reifenberg and some discussions about invisible ``wires'' (yielding the genus) and numerical simulations complete this fascinating paper.