The inverse surface and the Osserman inequality (Q1293142)

From the Introduction: We shall work with surfaces of constant mean curvature one in hyperbolic 3-space. These surfaces share many properties with minimal surfaces in Euclidean 3-space. A striking result is that these surfaces have a hyperbolic analogue of Weierstrass representation formula. Another important property is that the total curvature of CMC-1 surfaces is not necessarily an integral multiple of \(4\pi\), and does not generally satisfy Osserman inequality. Let \(f: M^2\to{\mathbf H}^3(-1)\) be a CMC-1 immersion. Then, there exists a null holomorphic immersion \(F:\widetilde M^2\to \text{SL}(2,\mathbb{C})\), such that \(f= F\cdot F^*\), where \(\widetilde M^2\) is the universal cover of \(M^2\). By taking the inverse of the matrix \(F\), we can construct a new CMC-1 surface \(f_{-1}:\widetilde M^2\to {\mathbf H}^3(-1)\), call it the inverse surface (or dual surface). Although the inverse surface is defined on the universal cover \(\widetilde M^2\), its metric \(ds^2_{-1}\) is well defined on \(M^2\). So, we have two metrics on \(M^2\), and they have the same completeness. \textit{M. Umehara} and \textit{K. Yamada} have shown that, if the surface \(f: M^2\to{\mathbf H}^3(-1)\) is complete and of finite total curvature, then the following Osserman type inequality holds (1) \({1\over 2\pi}\int_{M^2} k_{-1}dA_{-1}\leq \chi(M^2)- n\), where \(n\) is the number of ends of the original CMC-1 surface, equality holds if and only if all the ends are regular and embedded [Tsukuba J. Math. 21, 229-237 (1997)]. By carefully observing, we find that the condition of finite total curvature is not necessary. Indeed we have the following theorem: Let \(f: M^2\to{\mathbf H}^3(-1)\) be a complete CMC-1 immersion, then the Osserman inequality (1) holds.