Free boundary minimal surfaces with connected boundary and arbitrary genus (Q2090278)

A long-standing problem is whether the unit ball in \(\mathbb{R}^3\) contains free boundary minimal surfaces of any genus \(g\ge 0\) and any number of boundary connected components \(b\ge 1\). So far, a positive answer was given for \(g=0\) and \(b\ge 2\) [\textit{A. Fraser} and \textit{R. Schoen}, Invent. Math. 203, No. 3, 823--890 (2016; Zbl 1337.35099)], and \(g=0,1\) and \(b\) sufficiently large in [\textit{A. Folha} et al., Manuscr. Math. 154, No. 3--4, 359--409 (2017; Zbl 1381.35040)], or for \(b=1,3\) and \(g\) sufficiently large in[\textit{N. Kapouleas} and \textit{M. M. c. Li}, J. Reine Angew. Math. 776, 201--254 (2021; Zbl 1478.53108); \textit{N. Kapouleas} and \textit{D. Wiygul}, ``Free-boundary minimal surfaces with connected boundary in the 3-ball by tripling the equatorial disc'', Preprint, \url{arXiv:1711.00818}]. The glueing and desingularization techniques used to solve the problem when \(b=1\) prevent from considering the cases of low-genus \(g\). This paper positively solves the problem for \(b=1\) and \textit{any} genus \(g\ge 1\) by a delicate argument exploiting the equivariant min-max theory.