Modified defect relations for the Gauss map of minimal surfaces (Q1122786)

There is a long and exciting story on the distribution of values of the image of a complete minimal surface under the Gauß map. Important points are: the theorem of Bernstein, the inequalities of Heinz and Hopf, Nitsche's proof of Bernstein's theorem, Osserman's proof of the conjecture of Nirenberg and his theory of parametric minimal surfaces, the capacity-zero-theorem of Ahlfors, the six-points-theorem of Xavier and, finally, the four-points-theorem of the author in a recent paper. In the present paper defect relations for the Gauß map of minimal surfaces are proved: Let x: \(M\to {\mathbb{R}}^ 3\) be a nonflat complete minimal surface and g the Gauß map. Then \(\sum^{q}_{j=1}\delta^ H_ g(\alpha_ j)\leq 4\) for arbitrarily given distinct points \(\alpha_ 1,...,\alpha_ q\). Since the modified defect \(\delta^ H_ g(\alpha_ j)=1\) for every \(\alpha_ j\not\in g(M)\), the four-points- theorem follows again. Let x: \(M\to {\mathbb{R}}^ 3\) be a nonflat noncomplete minimal surface. If there exist distinct points \(\alpha_ 1,...,\alpha_ q\) such that \(\sum^{q}_{j=1}\delta^ 0_ g(\alpha_ j)>4,\) then \(| K(p)| \leq C/d(p)^ 2.\) This is a quantitative form of the theorem above. There is a similar relation between curvature and distance in the inequalities of Heinz and Hopf. Defect relations for minimal surfaces in \({\mathbb{R}}^ 4\) are given in a third theorem. Further a direct proof of the classical Nevanlinna defect relation with the Main Lemma can be found in this remarkable paper.