Triple covers and a non-simply connected surface spanning an elongated tetrahedron and beating the cone

By using a suitable triple cover we show how to possibly model the construction of a minimal surface with positive genus spanning all six edges of a tetrahedron, working in the space of BV functions and interpreting the film as the boundary of a Caccioppoli set in the covering space. After a questio...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors Bellettini, Giovanni, Paolini, Maurizio, Pasquarelli, Franco
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published 25.05.2017
Subjects
Mathematics - Differential Geometry
Mathematics - Geometric Topology
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Summary:By using a suitable triple cover we show how to possibly model the construction of a minimal surface with positive genus spanning all six edges of a tetrahedron, working in the space of BV functions and interpreting the film as the boundary of a Caccioppoli set in the covering space. After a question raised by R. Hardt in the late 1980's, it seems common opinion that an area-minimizing surface of this sort does not exist for a regular tetrahedron, although a proof of this fact is still missing. In this paper we show that there exists a surface of positive genus spanning the boundary of an elongated tetrahedron and having area strictly less than the area of the conic surface.
DOI:10.48550/arxiv.1705.09122