No label defined (Q4945834)

The authors consider the following free boundary problem for minimal surfaces in \(\mathbb{R}^3\): find a minimal surface \(S\) in the slab \(0\leq z\leq 1\) which has a fixed boundary \(\Sigma^*\) consisting of a finite union of disjoint Jordan curves in the plane \(z=1\) with the property that no curve in \(\Sigma^*\) lies inside another curve in \(\Sigma^*\) and a free nonempty boundary \(\Sigma\) in the plane \(z=0\) such that the outer normal to \(S\) along \(\Sigma\) makes a constant angle \(\alpha\in ]0,\pi[\) with the positive \(z\)-axis. It is proved in the paper that this problem has a solution provided that (i) \(-1+2/\rho< 1\) and (ii) \(0<\alpha<\text{arc cos}(-1+ 2/\rho)\) where \(\rho\) denotes the radius of a maximal disc fitting into the interior of any of the curves in \(\Sigma^*\). The proof is by minimization of a suitable functional over an appropriate set of rectifiable currents. Regularity of the solution follows from the work of \textit{J. Taylor} [Commun. Partial Differ. Equations 2, 323-357 (1977; Zbl 0357.35010)]. The above conditions (i), (ii) are used to rule out the possibility of the degenerate solution consisting of the interior domains of \(\Sigma^*\) in the plane \(z=1\). For the entire collection see [Zbl 0933.00009].