Boundary configurations spanning continua of minimal surfaces (Q1074121)

The authors provide us with a number of interesting examples. In their first example, they prove the existence of a rotationally nonsymmetric minimal surface of genus zero bounded by three coaxial circles which lie in parallel planes. This is done by a clever combination of J. Douglas's existence theorem and Schwarz's reflection principle. A number of other examples concern the free boundary problem in which at least part of the boundary of the minimal surface is free to lie anywhere in a given surface. Among other things, the authors prove the existence of a boundary configuration consisting of a circle and a real-analytic surface of revolution that bounds a one-parameter family of distinct, that is pairwise noncongruent, area-minimizing minimal surfaces of annulus type. Their final example concerns partitioning a smooth, convex, rotationally symmetric body. They construct such a body for which the partition problem with a prescribed volume V has a one-parameter family of noncongruent stationary solutions. The latter examples rely on considering minimal surfaces of revolution, thus effectively reducing the dimensionality of the problem.