Minimal surfaces in a wedge. II: The edge-creeping phenomenon (Q1383594)

This paper is a continuation of Part I of the article [Calc. Var. Partial Differ. Equ. 5, No. 2, 99-115 (1997; preceding review)]. The authors continue their investigation of disc type minimal surfaces in \(\mathbb{R}^3\) whose boundary is the union of a fixed Jordan arc \(\Gamma\) contained in a wedge \(W_\alpha\) of opening angle \(\pi+\alpha\pi\) and with endpoints on different faces of \(W_\alpha\) and a free trace on \(\partial W_\alpha\). The surfaces are stationary with respect to these boundary conditions implying that they meet \(\partial W_\alpha\) orthogonally along the free trace away from the edge \(G\) of \(W_\alpha\). The main result of the paper is the construction of such a boundary configuration and a corresponding stationary minimal surface which exhibits the phenomenon of ``edge creeping'', i.e., its free trace attaches to the edge in a full interval. The construction uses a similar but different free boundary problem where \(\partial W_\alpha\) is replaced by one of its faces (a half plane with boundary \(G\)) and \(\Gamma\) joins an interior point of the face with a boundary point and contains a straight segment near the endpoint of \(G\). It is shown that this boundary configuration can be chosen in such a way that any minimizing surface shows the edge creeping along \(G\). Such a solution is then reflected across the line determined by the above straight boundary segment to yield the desired example. Moreover, the authors give a general criterion for the occurence of edge creeping: if the edge is chosen as a coordinate axis and the corresponding coordinate function is monotonic on the Jordan arc \(\Gamma\), \(0<\alpha<1\), and some additional conditions are satisfied, then edge creeping must occur.