# A frame energy for immersed tori and applications to regular homotopy classes

created by mondino on 26 Jul 2013
modified on 24 Mar 2016

[BibTeX]

Accepted Paper

Inserted: 26 jul 2013
Last Updated: 24 mar 2016

Journal: Journal of Differential Geometry
Year: 2013

Abstract:

The paper is devoted to study the Dirichelet energy of moving frames on 2-dimensional tori immersed in the euclidean $3\leq m$-dimensional space. This functional, called Frame energy, is naturally linked to the Willmore energy of the immersion and on the conformal structure of the abstract underlying surface. As first result, a Willmore-conjecture type lower bound is established : namely for every torus immersed in ${\mathbb R}^m$, $m\geq 3$, and any moving frame on it, the frame energy is at least $2\pi^2$ and equalty holds if and only if $m\geq 4$, the immersion is the standard Clifford torus (up to rotations and dilations), and the frame is the flat one (up to a constant tangential rotation). Smootheness of the critical points of the frame energy is proved after the discovery of hidden conservation laws and, as application, the minimization of the Frame energy in regular homotopy classes of immersed tori in ${\mathbb R}^3$ is performed.