The cusp catastrophe of Thom in the bifurcation of minimal surfaces (Q801341)

The authors investigate the behavior of a minimal surface in \({\mathbb{R}}^ 3\) when its bounding curve undergoes small deformations. The situation is trivial if the second variation of area (or of Dirichlet's integral, if the surface is given in isothermal parameters) is non-degenerate whilst in case of degeneracy bifurcation (i.e. change of the number of minimal surfaces spanning the same curve) may be expected. The first example of such a bifurcation phenomenon had been discovered by J. C. C. Nitsche for a portion of the classical Enneper's surface. Pursuing a more systematic approach, based on the global analysis of Plateau's problem by the second author and on the singularity theory of smooth functions the present authors subject the same example to a deeper analysis. They show that for a suitable two-parameter perturbation of the bounding curve of the above surface Dirichlet's integral splits into a non-degenerate quadratic form and the generic unfolding of the function \(t\mapsto t^ 4\) at \(t=0\) (the so-called cusp catastrophe). This gives complete information about the bifurcation picture for the perturbations under consideration.