Doubly connected minimal surfaces and extremal harmonic mappings (Q692341)

If a circular annulus of inner and outer radii \(r, R\) is mapped quasiconformally onto a circular annulus of radii \(r_\ast\), \(R_\ast\), then (as is known) there are upper and lower bounds for \(R_\ast / r_\ast\) in terms of \(R/r\) and the constant of quasi-conformality. The ratio \(R_\ast / r_\ast\) is a conformal invariant, the log of which is known as the modulus (mod) of the mapping. If one considers instead harmonic mappings of annulus to annulus without regard to quasiconformality, there is a universal lower bound for \(R_\ast / r_\ast\). In this very interesting new contribution, the authors obtain an elegant improved lower bound for mappings that are both harmonic and quasiconformal, and they conjecture a corresponding upper bound. The authors apply their result to the Björling Problem, in which one seeks a minimal surface as an annular strip through a closed (analytic) curve in \(\mathbb R^3\), whose tangent planes contain prescribed vectors orthogonal to the curve at each point along the traverse. They assume a solution as a graph over an annulus for which the inner boundary is a unit circle, and the outer boundary a circle of radius \(\sigma > 1\), and then an analytic extension of the surface. The authors provide an explicit a priori upper bound for the modulus (defined analogously as above) of any extension that still projects onto the same annulus, and show that if equality is obtained then the surface identifies with part of a catenoid. The paper contains extensive motivating discussion and related material, with explicit examples. It will be valuable reading for anyone interested in the general topic that is addressed, and provides additionally a clear and lively exposition of relevant background theory.