Inextendible conformal realizations of Lorentz surfaces in Minkowski 3- space (Q1330160)

All subsets of the Minkowski 2-plane \(E^ 2_ 1\) being isometrically realized as subsets of any timelike plane in \(E^ 3_ 1\), the author studies whether such sets can be conformally realized by timelike surfaces which are in some sense inextendibly imbedded (or immersed) in \(E^ 3_ 1\). This paper presents methods for generating such conformal realizations. For the distinction between conformally inequivalent surfaces the author develops a number of indices whose values are preserved by conformal diffeomorphisms. The conformal type of a few familiar surfaces in \(E^ 3_ 1\) is determined and Weierstrass representation is used to generate minimal surfaces in \(E^ 3_ 1\) of various conformal types.