Rigidity of free boundary minimal disks in mean convex three-manifolds (Q6572316)

The purpose of this paper is to present a connection between free boundary minimal surfaces and general relativity using the modified Hawking mass. The modified Hawking mass of a compact free boundary surface \(\Sigma\) in a Riemannian three-manifold \((M, g)\) is defined to be\N\[\N\tilde{m}_{H}(\Sigma) = \sqrt{\frac{\mathrm{Area}(\Sigma)}{8\pi}}\left(\chi(\Sigma)-\frac{1}{8\pi}\int_{\Sigma}\left(H^2+\frac{2}{3}\Lambda\right)d\sigma\right) ,\N\]\Nwhere \(H\) is the mean curvature of \(\Sigma\) and \(\Lambda\) is the infimum of the scalar curvature.\N\NThe main result of the paper is the following. Let \((M, g)\) be a Riemannian three-manifold with boundary \(\partial M\), scalar curvature \(R\geq 2\) and \(H^{\partial M} \geq 0\). If \(\Sigma\) is a properly embedded, two-sided, free boundary strictly stable minimal two-disk which locally maximizes the modified Hawking mass, then the Gauss curvature of \(\Sigma\) is constant equal to \(1/a^2\) for some \(a \in (0, 1)\), the geodesic curvature of \(\partial\Sigma\) vanishes and a neighborhood of \(\Sigma\) in \((M, g)\) is isometric to the half de Sitter-Schwarzschild space.