Existence of surfaces minimizing the Willmore functional (Q1905460)

The Willmore functional is defined for compact surfaces \(\Sigma\) embedded in \(\mathbb{R}^n\) by \({\mathcal F}(\Sigma) = 4^{-1} \cdot \int_\Sigma |H|^2\), where the integration is with respect to ordinary 2-dimensional area measure, and \(H\) is the mean curvature vector of \(\Sigma\). The existence problem of a surface of genus \(g\) minimizing \(\mathcal F\) is studied. It is proved that the minimizing surface exists in the case \(g = 1\). For \(g\) greater than 1 it is shown that there is an embedded real analytic surface \(\Sigma_g\) of genus \(g\) in \(\mathbb{R}^n\) minimizing \(\mathcal F\) unless for some choice of \(q \geq 2\), \(\ell_1, \ell_2, \dots, \ell_q\), \(\sum^q_{j =1} \ell_j = g\), the equality \(\ell_g = \sum^q_{j =1} \ell_j\) holds, where \(\ell_g = \inf {\mathcal F} (\Sigma_g) -4\pi\). The inequality \(\ell_g \leq \sum^q_{j = 1} \ell_j\) is proved to be valid for any integers \(q \geq 2\) and \(\ell_1,\dots, \ell_q \geq 1\) with \(\sum^q_{j = 1} \ell_j = g\). It is conjectured that the strict inequality always takes place.