On stationary hypersurfaces in Euclidean spaces (Q2495543)

This paper is a study of stationary and stable submanifolds in Euclidean spaces from the viewpoint of geometric measure theory. The authors argue that results up to now have come from the viewpoint of harmonic maps, but they rather take the viewpoint of geometric measure theory. They point out that there are advantages to this, such as being able to state the first and second variation formulas without need of using a normal vector, and that the geometric measure theory approach is broader. Their first primary result is to obtain the first and second variation formulas. They then define stationarity and stability. They give a criterion for stationarity in terms of an equation involving integrals. Finally they give two theorems. The first states that if one has a stationary hypersurfaces without boundary and the inner product of the normal vector with some given fixed direction is always positive, then the hypersurface is a hyperplane. The second result is in a similar vein, but the condition on the normal vector is replaced with a curvature condition.