No label defined (Q4948762)

In 1976 \textit{J. L. Barbosa} and \textit{M. do Carmo} [Am. J. Math. 98, 515-528 (1976; Zbl 0332.53006)] proved the following well-known stability result for minimal surfaces in \(\mathbb{R}^3\): Let \(x: M\rightarrow \mathbb{R} ^3\) be a minimal surface in \(\mathbb{R}^3\) and let \(D\subset M\) be a bounded domain with smooth boundary. Assume that \(\int _D |K|dM<2\pi \), where \(K\) is the Gaussian curvature of \(M\). Then, \(D\) is stable. In the present paper, the authors extend the above stability result to hypersurfaces. Precisely, they first give the following definitions. The immersion \(x: M^n\rightarrow \mathbb{R} ^{n+1}\) is called ``special'' if \({{|H_n|}\over {\sum _i k_i^2}}= \text{const.}\), where \(k_i, i=1,\dots ,n, \) are the principal curvatures of \(x\) and \(H_n=k_1\cdots k_n \) is the Gauss-Kronecker curvature. If \(C\subset S_1^n\) is a spherical cap in the unit \(n\)-sphere \(S_1^n\), they denote by \(\overline A(C)\) its area with respect to the canonical metric of \( S_1^n\). Also, let \(C_{\gamma }\) be the spherical cap whose first eigenvalue of the Laplacian in the metric of \(S_1^n\) is \(\gamma \). Then, the authors give the following main result: Let \(x: M^n\rightarrow \mathbb{R} ^{n+1}\) be a minimal immersion and \(D\subset M^n\) be a bounded domain with smooth boundary. Assume that the Gauss-Kronecker curvature \(H_n\) of \(\overline D\) is nowhere zero and that \(M\) is special. Assume further that \(\int _D |H_n|dM<\overline A(C_{\gamma })\), where \(\gamma =\max_{i, D}(\sum _j k_j^2/k_i^2)\). Then, \(D\) is stable. Notice that this result, for \(n=2, \gamma =2\) and \(\overline A(C_{\gamma})=2\pi ,\) reduces to the stability result of J. L. Barbosa and M. do Carmo in the case \(K\neq 0.\)