Construction of spheres with handles and non-vanishing mean curvature in the Euclidean 3-space. (Q1405249)

Consider a bounded and smoothly bounded domain \( \Omega \subset \mathbb{R}^{n} \). Several nonlinear PDEs of the Monge-Ampère type require as a necessary assumption for their Dirichlet problem in \( \overline{\Omega} \) that the boundary \( \partial \Omega \) is convex to a specific degree \(m\), depending on the type of the PDE. This `\(m\)-convexity' means, that the mean curvatures of \( \partial \Omega \) of degrees \( 1,\ldots,m \) are positive everywhere. For domains in \( \mathbb{R}^{3} \), the \( 1 \)-convexity demands that the boundary surface has non-vanishing (positive) mean curvature \( H \). While strictly convex domains naturally own this property, it is not clear a priori that there exist compact embedded surfaces in \( \mathbb{R}^{3} \) of arbitrary genus with positive \( H \). The author solves this question in the affirmative by an elementary construction. He first attaches to a sphere a rotational neck in form of a thin cylinder whose axis meets the sphere centre and has \( H > 0 \). Then three of these necks may be attached to the same sphere forming a tripodal (bounded) surface. Two of these tripodal surfaces can be connected resulting in a tetrapodal piece. Finally putting together tetrapodal pieces in a suitable way, he obtains an embedded compact surface of any prescribed genus \( g > 1 \) with \( H > 0 \) everywhere. (For \( g \leq 1 \) the assertion is trivial.) Observe that for constant mean curvature \( H > 0 \) the only embedded compact surfaces are the round spheres by the Aleksandrov result [Ann. Mat. Pura Appl., IV. Ser. 58, 303--315 (1962; Zbl 0107.15603)].