Stably embedded surfaces of bounded integral curvature (Q1578064)

A two-dimensional manifold of (locally) bounded integral curvature (MBC) is a surface endowed with a length metric for which the Gauss curvature exists as a measure. These surfaces were extensively studied by A. D. Alexandrov and his school. A problem already suggested by him was to find classes of embedded surfaces which are analogous to the MBC ones [\textit{Yu. G. Reshetnyak}, ``Two-dimensional manifolds of bounded curvature'', in Geometry IV, Encyclopedia of Mathematical Sciences 70 (1993; Zbl 0777.00061)]. In the paper under review the author gives a condition to ensure (Theorem 4.3) that a sequence \(\Sigma_{i}\) of smooth embedded surfaces in a smooth Riemannian manifold \(M\) converges in the Hausdorff metric topology to a MBC \(\Sigma_{0}\). This condition is (plus some technical conditions) the uniform boundedness, on every compact subset \(L\subset M\), of \(\text{area }(\Sigma_{i}\cap L)\), \(\int_{\Sigma_{i}\cap L} |K_{i}|\) and \(\int_{\Sigma_{i}\cap L} |II_{i}|\), where \(K_{i}\) is the Gauss curvature and \(II_{i}\) is the second fundamental form of the surface \(\Sigma_{i}\). To obtain this convergence result the author uses some biLipschitz coordinates [\textit{J. H. G. Fu}, Indiana Univ. Math. J. 47, No. 2, 439-453 (1998; Zbl 0942.53007)] whose derivatives are functions of bounded variation with BV norm controlled by the curvature integrals above. In sections 1 and 2 of the paper the author makes an interesting study of the cut locus in a smooth Riemannian surface. Amongst other results, it is proved that the strict cut locus (inside the critical radius given by the smallest critical value of the distance function) is a denumerable union of curves with finite total absolute geodesic curvature. These results are needed in section 3 to establish the bounds on the BV norm.