The Morse index of a triply periodic minimal surface (Q1745792)

As it is well known, minimal surfaces represent surfaces that are (locally) area-minimizing. Another way to characterize minimal surfaces is as immersed surfaces which have zero mean curvature. In a previous work, the first author of this article had established an algorithm to compute the Morse index and the nullity of any \(n\)-periodic minimal surface in Euclidean \(n\)-space. The Morse index can be translated into the number of negative eigenvalues of a real symmetric matrix, while the nullity can be translated into the number of zero-eigenvalues of a Hermitian matrix. There are five special families of triply periodic minimal surfaces in Euclidean 3-space that are presented in this paper, as being of particular importance in crystallography and related fields. In this article, the authors first determine the two key matrices for the five families explicitly. Then, by numerical applications, they compute the Morse indices, nullities, and signatures for the five families. The paper is accessible to a very large audience of researchers working in the field of minimal surfaces.