Closed minimal surfaces in cusped hyperbolic three-manifolds (Q2406820)

It is well known [\textit{J. Sacks} and \textit{K. Uhlenbeck}, Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 271, 639--652 (1982; Zbl 0527.58008); \textit{R. Schoen} and \textit{S.-T. Yau}, Ann. Math. (2) 110, 127--142 (1979; Zbl 0431.53051)] that any closed incompressible surface of genus at least two in a closed \(3\)-manifold \(M^3\) is homotopic to an immersed least-area minimal surface. When \(M\) is a quasi-Fuchsian manifold, i.e., complete hyperbolic 3-manifold of infinite volume which is diffeomorphic to the product of a closed surface and \({\mathbb R}\), one can see the existence of closed incompressible surfaces of least area since the convex core of any geometrically finite quasi-Fuchsian manifold is compact with mean convex boundary and the techniques developed in the cited papers can be extended to this case. In this paper, motivated by these results on minimal surface theory in compact hyperbolic \(3\)-manifolds, the authors investigate the existence and deformations for least-area minimal surfaces in a complete noncompact hyperbolic \(3\)-manifold of finite volume. Such a manifold is called a cusped hyperbolic \(3\)-manifold. It is well known [\textit{J. H. Rubinstein}, Clay Math. Proc. 2, 725--746 (2005; Zbl 1119.53042)] that any cusped hyperbolic \(3\)-manifold admits infinitely many immersed closed minimal surfaces, however, they may not be embedded, nor incompressible. Using min-max theory, very recently \textit{P. Collin} et al. [Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 369, No. 6, 4293--4309 (2017; Zbl 1364.53056)] proved the existence of an embedded (not necessarily incompressible) compact minimal surface in a cusped hyperbolic \(3\)-manifold. The authors prove that any closed immersed incompressible surface of genus at least two can be deformed to a closed immersed least-area surface within its homotopy class in any cusped hyperbolic \(3\)-manifold.