Existence of immersed spheres minimizing curvature functionals in compact 3-manifolds (Q2249465)

The authors deal with surfaces in a compact 3-dimensional manifold and with the question whether for a suitable (geometrically defined) functional, there exist an immersion of a topological 2-sphere minimizing the functional in question. In particular they first deal with the functional \[ E(f) = \tfrac 12 \int_{S^2} | A |^2 d \mu_g, \] i.e. the functional given as the \(L^2\)-norm of the second fundamental form. In case that the ambient space has strictly positive sectional curvature, they show that there exists indeed a topological 2-sphere which is a minimiser for this functional. In the final section they also consider a functional related to the Willmore energy. Namely, they define \[ W_1(f)= \int_{S^2} (\tfrac 14 | H |^2 +1) d\mu_g. \] Provided that the sectional curvature of the ambient space is bounded above by \(2\) and that there exists a point of the ambient space where the scalar curvature is strictly greater then \(6\) they again show that there exist a minimiser for the above functional which is a topological 2-sphere.