Soap film solutions to Plateau's problem

DOI10.1007/S12220-012-9337-XzbMATH Open1302.49059arXiv1106.5839OpenAlexW2057742613WikidataQ56227808 ScholiaQ56227808MaRDI QIDQ472002FDOQ472002

Jenny Harrison

Publication date: 18 November 2014

Published in: The Journal of Geometric Analysis (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: Plateau's problem is to show the existence of an area minimizing surface with a given boundary, a problem posed by Lagrange in 1760. Experiments conducted by Plateau showed that an area minimizing surface can be obtained in the form of a film of oil stretched on a wire frame, and the problem came to be called Plateau's problem. Special cases have been solved by Douglas, Rado, Besicovitch, Federer and Fleming, and others. Federer and Fleming used the chain complex of integral currents with its continuous boundary operator to solve Plateau's problem for orientable, embedded surfaces. But integral currents cannot represent surfaces such as the Moebius strip or surfaces with triple junctions. In the class of varifolds, there are no existence theorems for a general Plateau problem because of a lack of a boundary operator. We use the chain complex of differential chains with its continuous boundary operator to solve a general version of Plateau's problem. We find the first solution which minimizes area taken from a collection of surfaces that includes all previous special cases, as well as all smoothly immersed surfaces of any genus type, both orientable and nonorientable, and surfaces with multiple junctions. Our result holds for all dimensions and codimensions in (R^n).

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1106.5839

zbMATH Keywords

compactnessdifferential formsPlateau's problem[https://portal.mardi4nfdi.de/w/index.php?title=+Special%3ASearch&search=Poincar%EF%BF%BD%EF%BF%BD+lemma&go=Go Poincar�� lemma]area-minimizing surfacesdifferential chains

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Minimal surfaces and optimization (49Q05) Minimal surfaces in differential geometry, surfaces with prescribed mean curvature (53A10) Geometric measure and integration theory, integral and normal currents in optimization (49Q15)

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Cited In (19)

• Simulation of a Soap Film Möbius Strip Transformation
• Soap film spanning an elastic link
• General methods of elliptic minimization
• Plateau’s Problem
• The Plateau-Douglas problem for singular configurations and in general metric spaces
• Existence of solutions to a general geometric elliptic variational problem
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