On the existence of surfaces with prescribed mean curvature and boundary in higher dimensions (Q2366599)

The author states that the motivation for the present work originates from the following problem: Given a \(C^ 2\) domain \(G\) in \(\mathbb{R}^{n+1}\), a nontrivial \(n-1\)-dimensional boundary \(B\) in \(G\), and a continuous function \(H: \overline G\to \mathbb{R}\), does there exist an \(n\)- dimensional hypersurface in \(G\) with boundary \(B\) and prescribed mean curvature \(H\)? The special case of Plateau's problem for surfaces of prescribed mean curvature has been studied by various authors and the generalization to higher-dimension is worked out in the setting of geometric measure theory. The following main result is proved: Let \(G\) be a \(C^ 2\) domain in \(\mathbb{R}^{n+1}\) such that \(\partial G\) has nonnegative mean curvature \({\mathcal H}_{\partial G}\). Suppose furthermore that \(B\) is a closed rectifiable \(n-1\) current with support \(\text{spt}(B)\subset G\), the class of admissible currents \({\mathcal J}(B,\overline G)\neq 0\) and \({\mathcal H}^ n(\text{spt}(B))= 0\) and that \(H: \overline G\to \mathbb{R}\) is continuous with \(| H(x)|\leq {\mathcal H}_{\partial G}(x)\) for \(x\in \partial G\). Then there exists a current \(T\in {\mathcal J}(B,\overline G)\) with prescribed mean curvature \(H\) of \(\mathbb{R}^{n+1}|\text{spt}(B)\) provided one of the four state conditions is satisfied.