arXiv research

We give an overview of the constrained Willmore problem and address some conjectures arising from partial results and numerical experiments. Ramifications of these conjectures would lead to a deeper understanding of the Willmore functional over conformal immersions from compact surfaces.

We show that the well-known family of $2$-lobed Delaunay tori $\;f^b\;$ in $\;S^3,\;$ parametrized by $\;b \in \mathbb R_{\geq1},\;$ uniquely minimizes the Willmore energy among all immersions from tori into $3$-space of conformal class $\;(a, b)\;$. As a corollary we obtain an alternate proof of the Willmore conjectur…

In 1965, T. J. Willmore conjectured that the integral of the square of the mean curvature of a torus immersed in Euclidean three-space is at least 2π^2. We prove this conjecture using the min-max theory of minimal surfaces.

Magnitude of Euclidean domains predicts Willmore energy in odd dimensions.

Symmetry-breaking in three differential geometry conjectures.

The Clifford torus is unique when its isoperimetric ratio is prescribed.

Researchers prove a Willmore conjecture for surfaces with specific symmetries.

Paper proves a conjecture about minimal hypersurfaces in spheres.

The Willmore conjecture states that any immersion F:T^2 -> R^n of a 2-torus into flat euclidean space satisfies $\int_{T^2} H^2\geq 2π^2$. We prove it under the condition that the L^p-norm of the Gaussian curvature is sufficiently small.

Proves Willmore conjecture for surfaces with specific symmetries.

New proof confirms De Giorgi's conjecture about phase-field approximation of Willmore functional.

New method generates critical points for complex functionals.

A new approach is proposed for study structure and properties of the total squared mean curvature $W$ of surfaces in ${\bf R}^3$. It is based on the generalized Weierstrass formulae for inducing surfaces. The quantity $W$ (Willmore functional) is shown to be invariant under the modified Novikov--Veselov hierarchy of in…

For a given quantum field theory, provided the area of the entangling surface is fixed, what surface maximizes entanglement entropy? We analyze the answer to this question in four and higher dimensions. Surprisingly, in four dimensions the answer is related to a mathematical problem of finding surfaces which minimize t…

The Willmore conjecture, proposed in 1965, concerns the quest to find the best torus of all. This problem has inspired a lot of mathematics over the years, helping bringing together ideas from subjects like conformal geometry, partial differential equations, algebraic geometry and geometric measure theory. In this arti…

The paper proves inequalities for closed surfaces involving mean curvature.

In 1965 Willmore conjectured that the integral of the square of the mean curvature of a torus immersed in $R^3$ is at least $2π^2$ and attains this minimal value if and only if the torus is a Möbius transform of the Clifford torus. This was recently proved by Marques and Neves. In this paper, we show for tori there is …

In this paper we provide a systematic discussion of how to incorporate orientation preserving symmetries into the treatment of Willmore surfaces via the loop group method. In this context we first develop a general treatment of Willmore surfaces admitting orientation preserving symmetries, and then show how to induce f…

Ejiri's torus in $S^5$ is the first example of Willmore surface which is not conformally equivalent to any minimal surface in any space forms. Li and Vrancken classified all Willmore surfaces of tensor product in $S^{n}$ by reducing them into elastic curves in $S^3$, and the Ejiri torus appeared as a special example. I…

The paper studies Willmore surfaces in 4D conformal manifolds and finds the Clifford torus is strictly Willmore-stable.

A proof of the Willmore conjecture is presented. With the help of the global Weierstrass representation the variational problem of the Willmore functional is transformed into a constrained variational problem on the moduli space of all spectral curves corresponding to periodic solutions of the Davey-Stewartson equation…

We study Willmore surfaces of constant Moebius curvature $K$ in $S^4$. It is proved that such a surface in $S^3$ must be part of a minimal surface in $R^3$ or the Clifford torus. Another result in this paper is that an isotropic surface (hence also Willmore) in $S^4$ of constant $K$ could only be part of a complex curv…

I will talk about my recent work with Fernando Marques where we used Almgren-Pitts Min-max Theory to settle some open questions in Geometry: The Willmore conjecture, the Freedman-He-Wang conjecture for links (jointly with Ian Agol), and the existence of infinitely many minimal hypersurfaces in manifolds of positive Ric…

Two years ago, F.C. Marques and A.A. Neves implemented, in the framework of closed rectifiable 2-dimensional currents of the 3-dimensional sphere, a min-max method in geometric measure theory due to F. Almgren and J. Pitts. Using this approach they succeeded in proving that the famous Clifford torus minimizes the area …

We construct finite-gap solutions to the modified Novikov-Veselov equations, describe their spectral properties and the reduction to the modified Korteweg--de Vries equation and explain its relation to soliton deformations of tori and the Willmore conjecture.

This is a survey on the recent progress in several applications of isoparametric theory, including an affirmative answer to Yau's conjecture on the first eigenvalue of Laplacian in the isoparametric case, a negative answer to Yau's 76th problem in his Problem Section, new examples of Willmore submanifolds in spheres, a…

Entropy is a natural geometric quantity measuring the complexity of a surface embedded in $\mathbb{R}^3$. For dynamical reasons relating to mean curvature flow, Colding-Ilmanen-Minicozzi-White conjectured that the entropy of any closed surface is at least that of the self-shrinking two-sphere. We prove this conjecture …

We solve the isoperimetric problem in the Lens spaces with large fundamental group. Namely, we prove that the isoperimetric surfaces are geodesic spheres or tori of revolution about geodesics. We also show that the isoperimetric problem in L(3,1) and L(3,2) follows from the proof of the Willmore conjecture by Marques a…

The Weierstrass representation for spheres in $\R^3$ and, in particular, effective construction of immersions from data of spectral theory origin is discussed. These data are related to Dirac operators on a plane and on an infinite cylinder and these operators are just representations of Dirac operators acting in spino…

The Willmore energy for Frenet curves in quaternionic projective space is the generalization of the Willmore functional for immersions into the 4-sphere. Critical points of the Willmore energy are called Willmore curves in quaternionic projective space. Using a Baecklund transformation on Willmore curves, we generalize…

We show that Lawson's bipolar surface $\tildeτ_{3,1}$ is after stereographic projection the unique minimizer among immersed Klein bottles in its conformal class. We conjecture that it actually is the unique minimizer among immersed Klein bottles into $\mathbb{R}^n$, $n\geq 4$, whose existence the authors and P. Breunin…

Willmore flow preserves low energy surfaces to planes.

In this paper we build an explicit example of a minimal bubble on a Willmore surface, showing there cannot be compactness for Willmore immersions of Willmore energy above $16 π$. Additionnally we prove an inequality on the second residue for limits sequences of Willmore immersions with simple minimal bubbles. Doing so,…

In this work, we study the Willmore submanifolds in a closed connected Riemannian manifold which are orbits for the isometric action of a compact connected Lie group. We call them homogeneous Willmore submanifolds or Willmore orbits. The criteria for these special Willmore submanifolds is much easier than the general t…

We show that the homogeneous and the 2-lobe Delaunay tori in the 3-sphere provide the only isothermic constrained Willmore tori in 3-space with Willmore energy below $8π$. In particular, every constrained Willmore torus with Willmore energy below $8π$ and non-rectangular conformal class is non-degenerated.

Survey of Willmore surfaces in spheres using DPW method.

Rigidity for 4D Willmore submanifolds with boundary.

New symmetric Willmore tori emerge from Clifford torus in Berger spheres.

We develop a general Minmax procedure in Euclidian spaces for constructing Willmore surfaces of non zero indices. We implement this procedure to the Willmore Minmax Sphere Eversion in the 3 dimensional euclidian space. We compute the cost of the Sphere eversion in terms of Willmore energies of Willmore Spheres in ${\R}…

Using the reformulation in divergence form of the Euler-Lagrange equation for the Willmore functional as it was developed in "Analysis of the Willmore Functional" by T. Riviere (Invent. Math. 174), we study the limit of a local Palais-Smale sequence of weak Willmore immersions with locally square-integrable second fund…

In this paper we develop the theory of Willmore sequences for Willmore surfaces in the 4-sphere. We show that under appropriate conditions this sequence has to terminate. In this case the Willmore surface either is the twistor projection of a holomorphic curve into complex projective space or the inversion of a minimal…

Let $ X: M \hook S^5$ be a compact Legendrian surface in pseudoconformal(CR) 5-sphere. We introduce a pseudoconformally invariant Willmore type second order functional $ \W(X)$, and study its critical points called Willmore Legendrian surfaces. The fifth order structure equations show that Willmore dual can be defined …

In this paper we study Willmore Legendrian surfaces (that is Legendrian surfaces which are critical points of the Willmore functional). We use an equality proved in \cite{Luo} to get a relation between Willmore Legendrian surfaces and contact stationary Legendrian surfaces in $\mathbb{S}^5$, and then we use this relati…

Study of tori of revolution under Willmore flow converges to Clifford Torus.

Spacelike Willmore surfaces in 4-dimensional Lorentzian space forms, a topic in Lorentzian conformal geometry which parallels the theory of Willmore surfaces in $S^4$, are studied in this paper. We define two kinds of transforms for such a surface, which produce the so-called left/right polar surfaces and the adjoint s…

Totally isotropic surfaces in $S^6$ are not necessarily Willmore surfaces. Therefore it is the first goal of this paper to derive a geometric characterization of totally isotropic Willmore two-spheres in $S^6$. This will naturally yield to a description of such surfaces in terms of the loop group language. Moreover, ap…

We study a class of fourth-order geometric problems modelling Willmore surfaces, conformally constrained Willmore surfaces, isoperimetrically constrained Willmore surfaces, bi-harmonic surfaces in the sense of Chen, among others. We prove several local energy estimates and derive a global gap lemma.

In this paper, we show that, under arbitrary bounded Willmore energy assumption, embedded Willmore spheres (or more generally, embedded Willmore spheres under area constraint) with small diameter in a given $3$-dimensional Riemannian manifold $(M, h)$ necessarily concentrate at a critical point of the scalar curvature …