Existence and nonexistence for the exterior Dirichlet problem for the minimal surface equation in the plane. (Q1854053)

The paper deals with the exterior Dirichlet problem for the minimal surface equation in the plane. They extend some results about existence and nonexistence from their foregoing paper as well as results of Williams. In particular, they construct boundary data with bounded \(C^{0,1}\)-norm and with arbitrary small oscillation for which a solutions of the problem mentioned does not exist (Theorem N). As far as concerns existence, they confine to solutions \(u\) with logarithmic growth, \(u(x) = c\ln x + O(1)\) as \(| x| \rightarrow \infty \), since the general case, \(u(x) = c_1x_1+c_2x + c\ln x+O(1)\), which could be treated, too, leads to unpleasant conditions.