On the Morse index of higher-dimensional free boundary minimal catenoids (Q1981619)

In this paper the authors define the \(n\)-dimensional critical catenoid \(M_n\) to be the unique rotationally symmetric, free-boundary minimal hypersurface of non-trivial topology embedded in the closed unit ball in \(\mathbb{R}^{n+1}\). They show that the Morse index \(MI(n)\) of \(M_n\) satisfies the following asymptotic estimate as \(n\) tends to infinity. That is \[ \lim_{n\rightarrow +\infty}\frac{\mathrm{Log}(MI(n))}{\sqrt{n}\mathrm{Log}(\sqrt{n})}=1. \] The authors illustrate their results with an in-depth study of the numerical problem, providing exact values for the Morse index for \(n = 2,\dots, 100\), together with qualitative studies of \(MI(n)\) and related geometric quantities for large values of \(n\). The paper is is very original and well written.