The cone over the Clifford torus in \(R^ 4\) is \(\Phi\)-minimizing (Q2276749)

The author shows that, in sharp contrast to the situation for the area- integrand and small smooth perturbations of the area-integrand, there is a real-analytic, constant coefficient, elliptic integrand, \(\Phi\), of degree 3 in \({\mathbb{R}}^ 4\) for which the cone \(C=\{(x,y)\in {\mathbb{R}}^ 2\times {\mathbb{R}}^ 2:| x| =| y| \leq 1\}\) is absolutely \(\Phi\)-minimizing. The proof employs the ``calibration method'', i.e. a closed differential 3-form \(\phi\) (the calibration) is produced with the property that for any point p and any unit 3-plane \(\xi\), with unit normal *\(\xi\), \[ (\dag)\quad <\xi,\phi (p)>\quad \leq \quad \Phi (*\xi) \] holds, with equality whenever \(\xi\) is the oriented unit tangent to C at p. The main difficulty is that the above inequality, (\(\dag)\), involves both p and \(\xi\) while for the area-integrand, where calibrations have already been used effectively, the dependence on \(\xi\) is eliminated. The new idea applied by the author is defining an integrand G, associated with \(\phi\), by setting \(G(w)=\sup \{| \phi (p)|:\) w is the oriented unit normal to the 3-plane dual to \(\phi\) (p)\(\}\), for unit vectors w. The main lemma concerning this G says that the inequality, (\(\dag)\), holds if the graph of G lies inside the Wulff crystal W(\(\Phi\)).