Energy quantization of Willmore surfaces at the boundary of the moduli space (Q1785961)

The objects of the present paper are sequences of immersions of a given closed surface \(\Sigma \) into \(\mathbb{R}^m\) which are critical points of the Willmore energy \(W\) and below a given energy level. Although introduced in the early 19th century in nonlinear mechanics and already studied by Blaschke in the 1920s the seminal paper of \textit{T. J. Willmore} [An. Sti. Univ. Al. I. Cuza Iasi, N. Ser., Sect. Ia 11B, 493--496 (1965; Zbl 0171.20001)] relaunched interest in the Lagrangian \(W\). The main result is Theorem 1.1 which asserts that if there is some loss of energy in a collar region then the amount of this loss has an explicit expression in terms of a residue and the hyperbolic lenght of the collar. Theorem 1.2 generalizes a result known for \(\Sigma =S^2\) and \(m=3\) and is concerned with a closed surface of genus \(g\geq 1\) and its conformal Willmore immersions with energy below \(12 \pi \).