On the Morse index with constraints for capillary surfaces (Q2688198)

Let us consider a general functional in the geometric calculus of variations. Let \(\Sigma\) be a critical point: usually the structure of the second derivative at that point is a quadratic form \(Q\) that has the following structure: \[ Q(u,v)=\int_\Sigma (\nabla u.\nabla v -puv)d\mu -\int_{\partial \Sigma} quv \,ds. \] Note that the critical points into consideration in that paper has always constant mean curvature and fixed intersecting angles. The authors are interested in the Morse index of \(Q\) on the space \(C^\infty(\Sigma)\) with or without constraints. Of course, when there are constraints, we must work on the subspace obtained by linearizing these constraints. For that purpose, they apply an abstract framework: the abstract Morse Index formulation that they develop in another paper. In that way, they are able to recover some interesting results previously obtained by several authors.