Negatively curved sets on surfaces of constant mean curvature in \(\mathbb{R}^3\) are large (Q1386637)

This paper mainly deals with the nonlinear PDE on a real function \(f\) of two real variables for the mean curvature of \(f\)'s graph to be constant. The authors prove that if the Hessian of a solution \(f\) is semi-positive definite on the boundary of \(f\)'s domain, then it is so on the whole domain. In geometrical terms, if the Gaussian curvature of the graph is nonnegative on the boundary, then it is so on the whole domain. The method used is the second-order calculus of variations.