The global theory of doubly periodic minimal surfaces (Q1122797)

The authors study properly embedded minimal surfaces M in \({\mathbb{T}}\times {\mathbb{R}}\) where \({\mathbb{T}}\) is a flat two-dimensional torus. The main result is that the total Gaussian curvature C(M) of M is finite and equal to \(2\pi\) \(\chi\) (M) if M is homeomorphic to a closed surface punctured in finitely many points. Various consequences of this result are proved, e.g. the number of ends of M must be even. Examples are constructed in every \({\mathbb{T}}\times {\mathbb{R}}\) of an infinite family of nonhomotopic Klein bottles minus two points.