The structure of \({\varphi}\)-stable minimal hypersurfaces in manifolds of nonnegative \(P\)-scalar curvature (Q993353)

The author studies the structure of \({\phi }\)-stable minimal oriented hypersurfaces in a three-dimensional manifold with nonnegative \(P\)-scalar curvature. For an \(n\)-dimensional smooth Riemannian manifold \((N^n,g)\) with a given smooth measure \(m\) on it, there exists a smooth positive function \(\phi \) such that \(dm = \phi\,d \operatorname{vol}(g)\). The triple \((N^n,g,\phi )\) is called a Riemannian manifold with density \(\phi \). Perelman introduced a variant of scalar curvature, in his recent work on solving Poincaré conjecture, defined as \(P(g)=R^m_\infty(g) = R(g) - 2\Delta_g \log\phi - |\nabla_g \log\phi |^2_g\), where \(R(g)\) is the scalar curvature of \((N^n,g)\). An immersed hypersurface \(M^{n-1}\subset N^n\) is called \({\phi }\)-minimal if \(\frac{d}{dt}|_{t=0} \operatorname{Vol}_\phi (F(M,t))=0\) for all variations \(F\) of \(M\) and it is called \({\phi }\)-stable minimal if it is \(\phi \)-minimal and \(\frac{d^2}{dt^2}|_{t=0} \operatorname{Vol}_\phi (F(M,t))\geq 0\) for all variations \(F\) of \(M\). Under a technical assumption on \({\phi }\), namely, if there exists a constant \(C\) such that \(|\nabla_M \log\phi |\leq C\), the author proves that a complete \({\phi }\)-stable minimal oriented hypersurface \(M^2\) in \((N^3,g,\phi )\) with \(P(g)\geq 0\) must be conformally equivalent to either the complex plane \(\mathbb{C}\) or the cylinder \({\mathbb{R}\times\mathbb{S}^1}\).