How to blow infinitely large soap bubbles with a fixed boundary (Q1174260)

Let \(\Gamma\subset\mathbb{R}^3\) be a rectifiable Jordan curve. The class of surfaces spanning \(\Gamma\) which is considered in this paper consists of those continuous maps from the closed unit plane disc into \(\mathbb{R}^3\) which have square summable first derivatives and which, when restricted to the unit circle, provide a weakly monotone representation of \(\Gamma\). For such a map \(u: D\to\mathbb{R}^3\) the oriented volume is defined by \[ V(u)=\int_{\mathring D}u\cdot u_x\wedge u_y \,dx \,dy. \] Earlier work of \textit{H. Wente} [Arch. Ration. Mech. Anal. 75, 59--77 (1980; Zbl 0473.49029)] showed the existence of an area minimizing surface among those having a prescribed volume and examined the behavior of a sequence of such minimizers with fixed volume and boundary curves of arbitrarily small length. In this paper, the boundary, \(\Gamma\), is held fixed and the magnitude of the volume constraint is increased without limit. The main result is that, after passing to a subsequence if necessary, there is a limit mapping which minimizes area under a constant volume constraint. A major technical difficulty arises in treating a sequence of mappings with unbounded Dirichlet integrals. Tools used are the monotonicity for area, Wente's results mentioned above, an estimate of Wente (ibid.) for the diameter of soap bubbles, and an isoperimetric inequality of \textit{E. Heinz} [ibid. 33, 155--168 (1969; Zbl 0176.51602)] for certain surfaces of constant mean curvature.