Minimizing configurations for elastic surface energies with elastic boundaries (Q2022644)

The authors analyze the critical surfaces for the Euler-Helfrich energy. They consider a compact and connected surface \(\Sigma \subset \mathbb{R}^{3}\) with boundary and the immersion \(X:\Sigma \rightarrow \mathbb{R}^{3}\), such that \(X(\Sigma)\) is an oriented surface of class \(C^{4}\). The Euler-Helfrich energy is given as \(E[\Sigma]=\int_{\Sigma}(a[K+c_{0}]^{2}+bK)d\Sigma +\oint\limits_{\partial \Sigma}(\alpha \kappa^{2}+\beta)ds\), where \(a,\alpha >0\), \(c_{0},b,\beta \in \mathbb{R}\) are constants, \(H\) is the mean curvature of the immersion, \(K\) is the Gaussian curvature of \(\Sigma \), and \(\kappa (s)=\sqrt{\kappa_{g}^{2}(s)+\kappa_{n}^{2}(s)}\), \(\kappa_{g}\) and \(\kappa_{n}\) being the geodesic and normal curvatures of the immersion. The first main result considers the case of critical immersions with constant mean curvature. If \(H\neq c_{0}\), the surface is a compact domain in the sphere of radius \(1/\left\vert H\right\vert \) and the authors give bounds on the constants. They prove further properties of such immersions and they give examples of such situations. Considering the case of an immersion with constant curvature of disk type with vanishing normal curvature, they prove that the surface is a planar domain and they give further details on its shape depending on the values of the constants. They also analyze the infimum of the energy \(E\) depending on \(\underline{E}=2\sqrt{\alpha \beta}-\left\vert b\right\vert \) and assuming \(c_{0}=0\). In the last part of their paper, the authors consider the case of topological annuli. They characterize the critical immersions in terms of the constants and of \(\underline{E}\). They give examples of such situations.