A priori estimates of the principal curvatures for immersions of prescribed mean curvature and theorems of Bernstein-type (Q756142)

The author proves estimates from above for the curvature of immersed surfaces in \({\mathbb{R}}^ 3\) of prescribed mean curvature (i.e. the mean curvature is a function of the point through which the surface passes). The principal result of the paper gives such an estimate in terms of the distance to the boundary, an area bound, and a ``modulus of projection'' of the surface, which consists in a control of the size (in the parameter domain) of pieces of the surface admitting a one-to-one projection onto some plane. From this result curvature estimates are derived for some more specific classes of such surfaces: graphs of prescribed mean curvature, stable surfaces of constant mean curvature (here stability refers to an associated energy functional) and surfaces of constant mean curvature satisfying the integral conditions \(\int \int H^ 2d\omega <4\pi\) and \(\int \int (H^ 2-K)d\omega <4\pi\) where H and K denote the mean and the Gauss curvature, respectively. The proof uses conformal parametrization and estimates of E. Heinz for one-to-one solutions to two-dimensional elliptic systems.