Minimal tori in \(S^{3}\) (Q953016)

The author studies minimal immersions of tori in the 3-dimensional sphere \(S^3(1)\). The starting point of the study is the work of \textit{N. J. Hitchin} [J. Differ. Geom. 31, No.~3, 627--710 (1990; Zbl 0725.58010)], who established an explicit bijection between harmonic maps to tori in the 3-sphere and spectral curve data (which contains an hyperelliptic curve \(\Sigma\) and a line bundle over \(\Sigma\)). The main result of the paper shows that for any strictly positive number \(g\), there are countably many spectral curves of arithmetic genus \(g\) giving rise to minimal immersions from rectangular tori to \(S^3\). As a corollary it is shown that for each positive integer \(n\), there exist countably many real \(n\)-dimensional families of minimal immersions from rectangular tori to \(S^3\). Each of these families consists of maps from a fixed torus. The proof of the theorem naturally divides into 2 cases depending on whether \(g\) is even or odd. Whereas the even case is quite similar to previous results for minimal tori in \(\mathbb R^3\), the odd case needs more work. The paper also contains a list of some remaining open questions and problems related to minimal tori in \(S^3\).