A Heintze-Karcher-type inequality for hypersurfaces with capillary boundary (Q2698529)

The classical Heintze-Karcher inequality states that for a domain \(\Omega \subset \mathbb{R}^{n+1}\) having a smooth and mean convex boundary \(\Sigma =\partial \Omega \) we have \(\int _{\Sigma }\frac{1}{H}\geq \frac{n+1}{n}|\Omega |\) with equality if and only if \(\Sigma \) is a geodesic sphere. Here \(\Sigma \) is said to be mean convex if its mean curvature \(H\) is strictly positive. It is worth to point out that a combination of the Haintze-Karcher inequality and the Minkowski-Hsiung formula yields the famous Alexandrov theorem that any embedded closed hypersurface with a constant mean curvature is a geodesic sphere. The aim of the paper under review is to establish a Heintze-Karcher-type inequality for capillary hypersurfaces in the half-space or a ball with the contact angle \(\theta \in (0, \frac{\pi }{2})\). Hence the authors define \(\Sigma \) as being a \(\theta \)-capillary hypersurface in some container \(B\) for \(\theta \in (0, \pi )\) if it intersects \(\partial B\) at a contact angle \(\theta \). The main results are the theorem 1.1 (for the half-space) and the theorem 1.2 (for a half ball). It follows Alexandrov type results in the corollary 1.3 respectively 1.4.