Curvature estimates and compactness theorems in 3-manifolds for surfaces that are stationary for parametric elliptic functionals (Q1820445)

Let N be a three dimensional Riemannian manifold and \(\Phi\) a function that assigns a real number \(\Phi\) (x,v) to each \(x\in N\) and each unit vector v in the tangent space to N at x. Then \(\Phi\) defines a functional on surfaces as follows: \[ \Phi (M)=\int_{x\in M}\Phi (x,\nu (x))dx \] where \(\nu\) (x) is the unit normal to M at x and the integration is with respect to surface area on M. A surface M is said to be \(\Phi\)-stationary if it satisfies the Euler-Lagrange equations for \(\Phi\). In the present paper the author proves curvature estimates and compactness theorems for regular \(\Phi\)-stationary surfaces provided \(\Phi\) is elliptic, i.e. if for some \(\lambda >0\), \((\Phi (x,v/| v|)-\lambda)| v|\) is a convex function of \(v\in T_ xN\).