A strict inequality for the minimization of the Willmore functional under isoperimetric constraint (Q6165629)

Let \(\Sigma\) be a smooth immersed closed surface in \(\mathbb{R}^3\) and \(W(\Sigma)\) its Willmore energy defined as \(W(\Sigma)=\int_\Sigma \mathcal{H}^2 d\sigma\) where \(\mathcal{H}\) is the mean curvature. Let us also denote by \(A(\Sigma)\) its area and \(V(\Sigma)\) the volume it encloses. We define classically the isoperimetric ratio by \(I(\Sigma)=A(\Sigma)/V(\Sigma)^{2/3}\). Let us finally introduce the class \(\mathcal{S}_{g,\sigma}\) of surfaces of genus \(g\) (an integer) and isoperimetric ratio \(\sigma\). The authors study the following isoperimetric constrained Willmore problem: minimize the Willmore energy among surfaces of given genus \(g\) and given isoperimetric ratio \(I(\Sigma)=\sigma_0\). The main result of this paper is the following: if we assume that the infimum of the Willmore energy in the class \(\mathcal{S}_{g,\sigma_0}\) is strictly less than \(8\pi\) then the authors prove existence of a minimizer. Note that the infimum is always less or equal to \(8\pi\), but the strict inequality is not known. For that purpose, the authors prove an interesting result about connected sums of two surfaces: roughly speaking they prove that if \(\Sigma\) denotes the connected sum \(\Sigma_1 \sharp \Sigma_2\), then there exists a smooth immersion \(f:\Sigma \to \mathbb{R}^3\) with the same isoperimetric ratio than \(\Sigma_2\) and such that their Willmore energies satisfy \[W(f) < W(\Sigma_1)+W(\Sigma_2) -4\pi.\]