Asymptotic analysis for surfaces with large constant mean curvature and free boundaries (Q2428178)

Recent years saw the construction of surfaces of constant mean curvature \(H\) in a smooth domain \(\Omega \subset \mathbb{R}^3\) such that the boundary \(\partial\Omega\) of \(\Omega\) contains the surface boundary and intersects the surface orthogonally. The motivation for constructing such surfaces comes from partitioning problems where a given domain is to be divided into two parts of prescribed volume by a surface of minimal area. For large \(H\), the known solutions concentrate at critical points of the mean curvature of \(\partial\Omega\). This article shows the necessity of this concentration under reasonable additional assumptions: If \(\Sigma^\varepsilon \subset \Omega\) is a sequence of embedded surfaces of constant mean curvature \(H = \frac{1}{\varepsilon}\) as described above, and the diameter and area of \(\Sigma^\varepsilon\) are \(O(\varepsilon)\) and \(O(\varepsilon^2)\), respectively, then a subsequence of \(\Sigma^\varepsilon\) converges to a critical point of the mean curvature of~\(\partial\Omega\). The assumptions on diameter and area avoid solutions that collapse along geodesics and an infinity of bubbles.