The geometry and topology of singly-periodic minimal surfaces (Q1769391)

Denote by \(S_{\theta }\), the screw motion symmetry in \(\mathbb R^{3}\), which is the composition of the nontrivial rotation \(R_{\theta }:\mathbb R^{3}\rightarrow \mathbb R^{3}\) counterclockwise around the \(x_{3}\)-axis by an angle \(\theta \), \(0<\theta \leq \pi \), with the translation \(\gamma \left( x_{1},x_{2},x_{3}\right) =\left( x_{1},x_{2},x_{3}+1\right) \). The author proves the following beautiful result: If \(M\) is a properly embedded minimal surface in \( \mathbb R^{3}/S_{\theta }\) with \(\theta \neq \pi \), then \(M\) has a finite number of ends. Furthermore, if \(M\) has at least two ends then \(M\) has a quadratic area growth. The proof relies on analytic methods developed by Collin, Kusner, the author and Rosenberg. Moreover, by using this approach, the author gives a new, simpler and more analytic proof of the following: A properly embedded minimal surface in \(\mathbb R^{3}/S_{\theta }\), \(\theta \neq \pi \), has finite total curvature if and only if it has finite genus.