Stability of surfaces with constant mean curvature in 3-dimensional Riemannian manifolds (Q803556)

The following theorem is proved. Let f: \(M^ 2\to N^ 3\) be an immersed surface with constant mean curvature into a 3-dimensional Riemannian manifold \(N^ 3\). Let \(D\subset M\) be a simply-connected domain with piecewise smooth boundary. Assume that the sectional curvature of N and the norm of the covariant derivative of the curvature tensor of N are bounded. Then, there exists a constant \(c>0\) such that if \[ \int_{D}(1+| A|^ 2/2) dM\quad <\quad c, \] D is stable; here A is the second fundamental form of f, and the constant c depends only on the above bounds. The proof depends on estimating the Gaussian curvature of the metric \(d\sigma^ 2=(1+| A|^ 2/2)ds^ 2,\) where \(ds^ 2\) is the metric induced by f.