On the area growth of minimal surfaces in \({\mathbf H}^n\) (Q1301605)

In this paper, the author studies properly immersed complete minimal surfaces in a hyperbolic space \(H^n\) of constant curvature \(-1\). Main results obtained are as follows: 1. Let \(M\) be an oriented and properly immersed complete minimal surface in \(H^n\), \(A\) the second fundamental form of \(M\) and \(r\) the distance function in \(H^n\) from a fixed point. If \(\int_Me^{-r(x)}|A|^2(x) dx<+\infty\), then \(M\) is of minimal area growth. Conversely, if \(M\) is of minimal area growth and finite topological type, then the above inequality holds. 2. Under the same hypothesis as in 1., let \(M_t={x\in M:r(x)<t}\). If \(\int_Me^{r(x)}|A|^2dx<\infty\), then \[ -\chi (M)\leq\frac 1{4\pi}\int_M|A|^2-{\text{sup}}\frac {{\text{area}}(M_t)}{2\pi ({\text{cosh}}t-1)}, \] where \(\chi (M)\) is the Euler characteristic of \(M\). Consequently, \(M\) has finite topological type. 3. If \(\lim_{t\to \infty}\frac {\int_{M_t}{\text{cosh}}r}{{\text{cosh}}^2t}=\pi,\) then \(M\) is totally geodesic.