Some calibrated surfaces in manifolds with density (Q550309)

The paper under review is divided into five sections. It deals clearly with a Riemannian manifold with density, that is with a Riemannian manifold, namely \(M\), endowed with a positive function called density, say \(e^{\psi }\), used to weight both volume and perimeter. The corresponding weighted volume and perimeter are, respectively, defined as \(e^\psi dV\) and \(e^\psi dA\), where \(dV\) and \(dA\) are the Riemannian volume and the perimeter, respectively. The natural generalization of the mean curvature called weighted mean curvature of a hypersurface in a manifold with density \(e^\psi\) is defined as \(H_\psi=H-\frac{1}{n-1}\frac{d\psi }{d\mathbf{n}}\), where \(H\) is the classical mean curvature and \(\mathbf{n}\) is the unit normal vector field to the hypersurface. The author wants to study the conditions on density which make some constant weighted mean curvature hypersurfaces stable and weighted area-minimizing. This notion means having the least weighted perimeter in a homology class or under compact weighted-volume-preserving deformations. Three cases are thoroughly considered: hyperplanes in \(\mathbb{R}^{n}\), with a smooth density; \(\delta =e^{\varphi (x)+\psi (x_{n})}\) where \(x=(x_{1},\dots,x_{n-1})\); hyperspheres in \(\mathbb{R}^{n}-\{0\}\) with a smooth spherical density; and hypercylinders in \(\mathbb{R}^{n}-\{0\}\times \mathbb{R}^{k}\) with a smooth cylindrical density. The proofs are applications of Stokes' theorem as in the calibration method that is recalled in section 2 of the paper.