Evolution of minimal torus in Riemannian manifolds (Q2501074)

This paper contributes to the problem of finding closed minimal submanifolds in a closed Riemannian manifold. The paper concerns a new evolution equation for mappings from a closed Riemann surface (of given genus) into a Riemannian manifold \(\Sigma\) and for the conformal structure on \(\Sigma\). The global existence of the new flow is shown by a method of \textit{M. Struwe} [Comment. Math. Helv. 60, 558--581 (1985; Zbl 0595.58013)]. The main result concerns the behavior near infinity. Here a criterion of Mumford is used, and the analysis shows that one may have strong convergence (safe for finitely many exceptional points), or there may be no convergence, in which case there exist finitely many bubbles. This gives new proofs of results by \textit{J. Sachs} and \textit{K. Uhlenbeck} on minimal immersions of closed Riemann surfaces [Trans Am. Math. Soc. 271, 639--652 (1982; Zbl 0527.58008)] and by \textit{R. Schoen} and \textit{S.-T. Yau} [Ann. Math. (2) 110, 127--142 (1979; Zbl 0431.53051)], again leading to the existence of a branched immersed minimal surface.