On the Dido problem and plane isoperimetric problems (Q1819128)

In this paper the authors work with an oriented 2-dimensional Riemannian structure \((M,g)\). They consider fixed points \(q_0,q_1\in M\) together with a smooth curve \(\overline \gamma: [0,1] \rightarrow M\), \(\overline \gamma(0)=q_0\), \(\overline \gamma (1)=q_1\) and they look for curves \(\gamma:[0,1]\rightarrow M\), \(\gamma(0)=q_1\), \(\gamma(1)=q_0\) with minimal Riemannian length \(l\), such that the value \(A\) of the integral \(\int_{\Omega}\eta\) is prescribed where \(\Omega\) is the domain encircled by \(\gamma\) and \(\overline \gamma\) and \(\eta\) is a 2-form \(\eta= (\text{Volume})\psi\). They refer to the above problem as the generic isoperimetric problem. If \(\psi=1\) the above problem is just the dual formulation of the classical isoperimetric problem which consists of maximizing the area for prescribed length. They refer this last problem as the Dido problem. Thanks to the classification of spheres, conjugate-loci and cut-loci done in former papers they are able to give in this paper a local positive answer to the generic isoperimetric problem. On the contrary, for the Dido problem these results do not apply; so they study in detail this special case, and obtain results that are very similar to those of the generic isoperimetric case. They also analyse the singularities that may appear in general for the Dido problem and give applications to the motion of particles in a nonvanishing constant magnetic field.