We introduce the concept of extrinsic catenary in the hyperbolic plane. Working in the hyperboloid model, we define an extrinsic catenary as the shape of a curve hanging under its weight as seen from the ambient space. In other words, an extrinsic catenary is a critical point of the potential functional, where we calculate the potential with the extrinsic distance to a fixed reference plane in the ambient Lorentzian space. We then characterize extrinsic catenaries in terms of their curvature and as a solution to a prescribed curvature problem involving certain vector fields. In addition, we prove that the generating curve of any minimal surface of revolution in the hyperbolic space is an extrinsic catenary with respect to an appropriate reference plane. Finally, we prove that one of the families of extrinsic catenaries admits an intrinsic characterization if we replace the extrinsic distance with the intrinsic length of horocycles orthogonal to a reference geodesic.

The total mean curvature functional for submanifolds into the Riemannian product space $\mathbb{S}^n\times\mathbb{R}$ is considered and its first variational formula is presented. Later on, two second-order differential operators are defined and a nice integral inequality relating both of them is proved. Finally, we prove our main result: an integral inequality for closed stationary $\mathcal{H}$-surfaces in $\mathbb{S}^n\times\mathbb{R}$, characterizing the cases where the equality is attained.

In this paper we survey recent developments in the classical theory of minimal surfaces in Euclidean spaces which have been obtained as applications of both classical and modern complex analytic methods; in particular, Oka theory, period dominating holomorphic sprays, gluing methods for holomorphic maps, and the Riemann–Hilbert boundary value problem. Emphasis is on results pertaining to the global theory of minimal surfaces, in particular, the Calabi–Yau problem, constructions of properly immersed and embedded minimal surfaces in $\mathbb{R}^{n}$ and in minimally convex domains of $\mathbb{R}^{n}$, results on the complex Gauss map, isotopies of conformal minimal immersions, and the analysis of the homotopy type of the space of all conformal minimal immersions from a given open Riemann surface.

The classical result of Nevanlinna states that two nonconstantmeromorphic functions on the complex plane having the same images for five distinct values must be identically equal to each other. In this paper, we give a similar uniqueness theorem for the Gauss maps of complete minimal surfaces in Euclidean four-space.

If the closed wire frame of a soap film having the shape of a Möbius strip is pulled apart and gradually deformed into a planar circle, the soap film transforms into a two-sided orientable surface. In the presence of a finite-time twist singularity, which changes the linking number of the film's Plateau border and the centreline of the wire, the topological transformation involves the collapse of the film toward the wire. In contrast to experimental studies of this process reported elsewhere, we use a numerical approach based on the immersed boundary method, which treats the soap film as a massless membrane in a Navier-Stokes fluid. In addition to known effects, we discover vibrating motions of the film arising after the topological change is completed, similar to the vibration of a circular membrane.

This paper introduces a two-stage model for multi-channel image segmentation, which is motivated by minimal surface theory. Indeed, in the first stage, we acquire a smooth solution u from a convex variational model related to minimal surface property and different data fidelity terms are considered. This minimization problem is solved efficiently by the classical primal-dual approach. In the second stage, we adopt thresholding to segment the smoothed image u. Here, instead of using K-means to determine the thresholds, we propose a more stable hill-climbing procedure to locate the peaks on the 3D histogram of u as thresholds, in the meantime, this algorithm can also detect the number of segments. Finally, numerical results demonstrate that the proposed method is very robust against noise and superior to other image segmentation approaches.

We elucidate the geometric background of function-theoretic properties for the Gauss maps of several classes of immersed surfaces in three-dimensional space forms, for example, minimal surfaces in Euclidean three-space, improper affine spheres in the affine three-space, and constant mean curvature one surfaces and flat surfaces in hyperbolic three-space. To achieve this purpose, we prove an optimal curvature bound for a specified conformal metric on an open Riemann surface and give some applications. We also provide unicity theorems for the Gauss maps of these classes of surfaces.

The normalized eigenvalues ${{\Lambda }_{i}}\left( M,\,g \right)$ of the Laplace–Beltrami operator can be considered as functionals on the space of all Riemannian metrics $g$ on a fixed surface $M$. In recent papers several explicit examples of extremal metrics were provided. These metrics are induced by minimal immersions of surfaces in ${{\mathbb{S}}^{3}}$ or ${{\mathbb{S}}^{4}}$. In this paper a family of extremal metrics induced by minimal immersions in ${{\mathbb{S}}^{5}}$ is investigated.

Complete minimal immersions satisfying the Omori–Yau maximum principle are investigated. It is shown that the limit set of a proper immersion into a convex set must be the whole boundary of the convex set. In case of a nonproper and nonplanar immersion we prove that the convex hull of the immersion is a half-space or ℝ3.

In this paper, we shall study the Dirichlet problem for the minimal surfaces equation. We prove some results about the boundary behaviour of a solution of this problem. We describe the behaviour of a non-converging sequence of solutions in term of lines of divergence in the domain. Using this second result, we build some solutions of the Dirichlet problem on unbounded domain. We then give a new proof of the result of Cosín and Ros concerning the Plateau problem at infinity for horizontal ends.

AMS 2000 Mathematics subject classification: Primary 53A10

We prove that given a convex Jordan curve $\varGamma\subset\{x_3=0\}$, the space of properly embedded minimal annuli in the half-space $\{x_3\geq0\}$, with boundary $\varGamma$ is diffeomorphic to the interval $[0,\infty)$. Moreover, for a fixed positive number $a$, the exterior Plateau problem that consists of finding a properly embedded minimal annulus in the upper half-space, with finite total curvature, boundary $\varGamma$ and a catenoid type end with logarithmic growth $a$ has exactly zero, one or two solutions, each one with a different stability character for the Jacobi operator.

AMS 2000 Mathematics subject classification: Primary 53A10. Secondary 49Q05; 53C42

A minimal surface is a surface with vanishing mean curvature. In this paper we study self θ -congruent minimal surfaces, that is, surfaces which are congruent to their θ-associates under rigid motions in R3 for 0 ≤ θ < 2π. We give necessary and sufficient conditions in terms of its Weierstrass pair for a surface to be self θ-congruent. We also construct some examples and give an application.