On Lichtenstein's theorem about globally conformal mappings (Q2486967)

The authors present a new variational proof of the well-known fact that every Riemannian metric on a 2-dimensional, simply connected domain \(\Omega\) with boundary can be represented by globally conformal parameters. From this the corresponding result for a metric on \(S^2\) is derived. The proof proceeds by minimizing the Riemannian area functional \(A\) among all mappings from the unit disc \(B\) into \(\mathbb{R}^2\) of Sobolev class \(H^{1,2}\) which map \(\partial B\) weakly monotonically onto \(\partial\Omega\). Since this minimization can hardly be achieved directly, the authors use a trick they invented in one of their previous papers and which consists in first minimizing the perturbed functional \(A_\varepsilon= (1-\varepsilon)A+\varepsilon D\) where \(D\) denotes the Riemannian Dirichlet energy and then letting \(\varepsilon\) tend to \(0\).