Classification of Willmore surfaces with vanishing Gaussian curvature (Q6100451)

The author proposes a classification of simply-connected, orientable, complete Willmore surfaces with vanishing Gaussian curvature, and of Willmore cones in \(\mathbb{R}^{3}\). The Willmore functional associated to an embedding \(f:\mathbb{R}^{3}\rightarrow \mathbb{R}^{3}\) is defined as \[ \mathcal{W}(f)=\frac{1}{4}\int_{\mathbb{R}^{2}}\left\vert H\right\vert ^{2}d\mu g,\] where \(H=\Delta _{g}f\) is the mean curvature and \(g\) the induced metric. \(f\) is Willmore if it is a critical point of \(\mathcal{W}\) and a solution to the Euler-Lagrange equation: \(\Delta _{g}H+\frac{1}{2} (\left\vert H\right\vert ^{2}-4K_{g})H=0\), where \(K_{g}\) is the Gaussian curvature. A complete Willmore surface of Gaussian curvature zero can be locally written as a graph \(\{(x,y,u(x)):x\in I\subset \mathbb{R},y\in \mathbb{R}\}\) under an appropriate coordinate system and the Euler-Lagrange equation thus reduces to the differential equation \[ \left( \frac{w^{\prime \prime }(1+w^{2})-\frac{5}{2}w(w^{\prime })^{2}}{(1+w^{2})^{\frac{7}{2}}} \right) ^{\prime }=0, \] where \(w=u^{\prime }\). The first main result proves that for any \(C>0\), the last equation has a unique global solution \(u_{C}\) with initial conditions \(u_{C}(0)=0=w_{C}(0)=w_{C}^{\prime \prime }(0)\) , \(w_{C}^{\prime }(0)=\sqrt{2}C\). Moreover, the graph \(\Sigma _{C}=\{(x,y,u_{C}(x)):x\in \mathbb{R},y\in \mathbb{R}\}\) is a smooth simply-connected, complete, non-flat, embedded Willmore surface with vanishing Gaussian curvature. The author also proves that the image of the Gauss map of \(\Sigma _{C}\) is a great semi-circle \(\{(x,y,z)\in \mathbb{R} ^{3}:x^{2}+z^{2}=1,y=0,z\geq 0\}\). Finally, he proves that for any simply-connected, orientable, complete, non-flat Willmore surface \(\Sigma \) with vanishing Gaussian curvature, there exist \(C>0\) and an isometric transformation \(\mathcal{I}_{C}\) in \(\mathbb{R}^{3}\) such that \(\Sigma = \mathcal{I}_{C}(\Sigma _{C})\). For the proof, the author observes that \( \Sigma \) is isometric to \(\mathbb{R}^{2}\), then he proves by contradiction that \(H\) vanishes at some point \(p\in \Sigma \). He then uses properties of the above differential equation. A cone \(\mathcal{C}_{\gamma }=\{r\gamma (\mathbb{R}):r>0,\left\vert \gamma (s)\right\vert =1,\left\vert \gamma ^{\prime }(s)\right\vert =1\}\), where \(\gamma :\mathbb{R}\rightarrow \mathbb{ S}^{2}\) is an immersion, is a Willmore cone if \(\Delta _{\mathcal{C}_{\gamma }}H_{\mathcal{C}_{\gamma }}+\frac{1}{2}H_{\mathcal{C}_{\gamma }}^{3}-2H_{ \mathcal{C}_{\gamma }}K_{\mathcal{C}_{\gamma }}=0\), where \(H_{\mathcal{C} _{\gamma }}\) is the mean curvature and \(K_{\mathcal{C}_{\gamma }}\) the Gaussian curvature of \(\mathcal{C}_{\gamma }\). In this case the author proves the non-existence of a complete Willmore embedding \(f:\mathbb{R }^{2}\rightarrow \mathbb{R}^{3}\) such that there exists \(C>0\) with \[ 0<\int_{\mathbb{R}^{2}} K_{g} d\mu _{g}\leq 2\pi,\qquad \int_{\mathbb{R}^{2}}\left\vert K_{g}\right\vert d\mu _{g}\leq C, \] and the image of the corresponding Gauss map lies in \(\{\theta \in \mathbb{S}^{2}:d_{\mathbb{S} ^{2}}(\theta ,\theta _{0})\leq \alpha <\frac{\pi }{2}\}\). For the proof, the author proceeds by contradiction. The paper ends with the proof of a Bernstein type result.