Hadamard's and Calabi-Yau's conjectures on negatively curved and minimal surfaces (Q5961444)

Suppose \((M,s)\) is a Riemann surface with complete Riemannian metric \(s\). Suppose there is an isometric immersion \(\Psi: (M,s) \to B_1\), where \(B_1\) denotes the unit ball in \(\mathbb{R}^3\). Hadamard's conjecture asks whether this is possible when \(s\) has negative Gaussian curvature. If the Gaussian curvature of \(s\) is a negative constant, Hilbert showed that immersion is impossible even into the whole space \(\mathbb{R}^3\). The Calabi-Yau problem asks whether it is possible that such an immersion \(\Psi\) is minimal. This paper shows that the answer to both questions is affirmative by showing that there exists a complete surface of negative Gaussian curvature minimally immersed in \(\mathbb{R}^3\) which is a subset of \(B_1\). The example is a minimal surface; the proof uses the Weierstrass representation of minimal surfaces and the Runge approximation theorem.