Area-stationary surfaces inside the sub-Riemannian three-sphere (Q2465225)

Let \(g_h\) be the sub-Riemannian metric on \({\text{S}^{3}}\) constructed as the restriction of the Riemannian metric of volume 1 to the plane distribution orthogonal to the Hopf vector field. The geodesics associated to the Carnot-Carathéodory distance are computed. They are proved to be closed or dense subsets of a Clifford torus. By analogy with [\textit{M. Ritoré} and \textit{C. Rosales}, Area-stationary surfaces in the Heisenberg group \(H^1\), \url{arxiv:math.DG/0512547} (2005)], some characterizations of area-stationary surfaces with or without a volume constraint in \((\text{S}^{3},g_h)\) are given and some classification results for complete volume-preserving area-stationary surfaces with non-empty singular set are also obtained here. The mean curvature \(H\) of the embedded surfaces \(S\) in \((\text{S}^{3},g_h)\) is introduced in a variational way and it is proved that the only \(C^2\)-compact, connected, such surfaces \(S\) with empty singular set and constant \(H\) which satisfies a certain property, are Clifford tori. The complete rotationally invariant surfaces \(S\) with constant \(H\) are described at the end.