On the Björling problem for Willmore surfaces (Q1700321)

The classical Björling problem is to find a unique minimal surface that contains a given curve with surface normal prescribed along the curve, and the solution can be found, in terms of the Weierstrass-Enneper representation, via analytic extension of the prescribed data. It is a useful tool in the study of minimal surfaces and has been generalized recently to several other surface classes. In this paper, the authors consider the Björling's problem for Willmore surfaces. A Willmore surface in Euclidean \(3\)-space is an immersion \(\Sigma\) that is locally critical for the Willmore functional \({\mathcal W}(\Sigma) = \int_\Sigma H^2 dA,\) where \(H\) is the mean curvature of \(\Sigma\). Willmore surfaces are generalizations of minimal surfaces and are invariant under conformal transformations of the ambient space. So it is natural to choose a \(3\)-sphere \({\mathbb S}^3\) as the ambient space. The authors solve the analogue of Björling's problem for Willmore surfaces via a harmonic map representation. For the umbilic-free case, they prove that given a real analytic curve \(y_0\) in \({\mathbb S}^3\) together with the prescription of the values of the surface normal and the dual Willmore surface along the curve, lifted to the light cone in Minkowski \(5\)-space \({\mathbb R}_1^5\), there exists a unique pair of dual Willmore surfaces \(y\) and \(\hat y\) satisfying the given conditions along the curve. The authors also give explicit formulas for the generalized Weierstrass data for the surface pair. Using this result, they describe all \(\mathrm{SO}(4)\)-equivariant Willmore surfaces in \({\mathbb S}^3\), that is, surfaces invariant under the action of a \(1\)-parameter subgroup of the isometry group. In the last part of the paper, the authors also discuss the case when the surfaces have umbilic points.