A direct approach to Plateau's problem in any codimension (Q900845)

The authors extend to any codimension some results obtained in [\textit{C. De Lellis} et al., ``A direct approach to Plateau's problem'', J. Eur. Math. Soc. (to appear), \url{arXiv:1408.4047}]. They show that in the case of \(\mathfrak{H}^d\) rectifiable sets that are closed by Lipschitz deformations, the infimum is achieved by a compact set \(K\) which, away from the ''boundary'', is an analytic manifold outside a closed set of Hausdorff dimension at most \(d-1\). Then, they apply this result to provide existence of sets spanning a given boundary according to a natural generalization given by Harrison and Pugh. They show the existence of sliding minimizers in any codimension. The general strategy of proof is that from [loc. cit.] with some non-trivial modification which is done in order to deal with sets of any codimension. They obtain a precise density lower bound for the measure obtained as limit of the sequence of Radon measures naturally associated to a minimizing sequence \((K_j)\). Instead of relying on relative isoperimetric inequalities on the sphere, they use the deformation theorem of David and Semmes to obtain some suitable sets, following a strategy introduced by Federer and Fleming in the case of rectifiable currents. They show that any set achieving the infimum is a stationary varifold which is smooth outside a set of relative codimension one. This regularity is optimal.