Closed hypersurfaces of prescribed mean curvature in locally conformally flat Riemannian manifolds (Q1281877)

The author studies the existence problem for smooth closed hypersurfaces of prescribed mean curvature which are homeomorphic to \(S^n\). Let \(M_1\), \(M_2\) be closed hypersurfaces in a locally conformally flat manifold \(N\) homeomorphic to \(S^n\) and of class \(C^{2,\alpha}\) which bound an open, connected, relatively compact subset \(\Omega\). \(M_1\), \(M_2\) are called barriers for \((H,f)\) if \(H|_{M_1}\leq f\), \(H|_{M_2}\geq f\). Here, \(f\in C^{0,1}(\overline \Omega)\) and \(\Omega\) is conformally equivalent to an open, bounded set in \({\mathbb R}^{n+1}\). The main result of the paper is the following. Let \(\Omega\), \(M_1\), \(M_2\) and \(f\) satisfy the assumptions stated above. Then the problem \(H|_{M}=f\) has a solution \(M \subset \overline \Omega\) of class \(C^{2,\alpha }\) homeomorphic to \(S^{n}\), if \(n\leq 6\). Other auxiliary results concerning almost minimal solutions and prescribed mean curvature surfaces are also established in the paper.