Plateau's problem

In mathematics, Plateau's problem is to

show the existence of a minimal surface
with a given boundary, a problem raised by
Joseph-Louis Lagrange in 1760. However,
it is named after Joseph Plateau who
experimented with soap films. The
problem is considered part of the calculus
of variations. The existence and regularity
problems are part of geometric measure
theory.
A soap bubble in the shape of a catenoid

History
Various specialized forms of the problem
were solved, but it was only in 1930 that
general solutions were found in the
context of mappings (immersions)
independently by Jesse Douglas and Tibor
Radó. Their methods were quite different;
Radó's work built on the previous work of
René Garnier and held only for rectifiable
simple closed curves, whereas Douglas
used completely new ideas with his result
holding for an arbitrary simple closed
curve. Both relied on setting up
minimization problems; Douglas
minimized the now-named Douglas
integral while Radó minimized the
"energy". Douglas went on to be awarded
the Fields Medal in 1936 for his efforts.

In higher dimensions
The extension of the problem to higher
dimensions (that is, for -dimensional
surfaces in -dimensional space) turns
out to be much more difficult to study.
Moreover, while the solutions to the
original problem are always regular, it
turns out that the solutions to the
extended problem may have singularities if
. In the hypersurface case
where , singularities occur only
for . An example of such singular
solution of the Plateau problem is the
Simons cone, a cone over in
that was first described by Jim Simons
and was shown to be an area minimizer by
Bombieri, De Giorgi and Giusti.[1] To solve
the extended problem in certain special
cases, the theory of perimeters (De Giorgi)
for codimension 1 and the theory of
rectifiable currents (Federer and Fleming)
for higher codimension have been
developed. The theory guarantees
existence of codimension 1 solutions that
are smooth away from a closed set of
Hausdorff dimension . In the case
of higher codimension Almgren proved
existence of solutions with singular set of
dimension at most in his regularity
theorem. S. X. Chang, a student of
Almgren, built upon Almgren’s work to
show that the singularities of 2-
dimensional area minimizing integral
currents (in arbitrary codimension) form a
finite discrete set.[2][3]

The axiomatic approach of Jenny Harrison

and Harrison Pugh[4] treats a wide variety
of special cases. In particular, they solve
the anisotropic Plateau problem in
arbitrary dimension and codimension for
any collection of rectifiable sets satisfying
a combination of general homological,
cohomological or homotopical spanning
conditions. A different proof of Harrison-
Pugh's results were obtained by Camillo
De Lellis, Francesco Ghiraldin and
Francesco Maggi.[5]

Physical applications
Physical soap films are more accurately
modeled by the -minimal sets
of Frederick Almgren, but the lack of a
compactness theorem makes it difficult to
prove the existence of an area minimizer.
In this context, a persistent open question
has been the existence of a least-area
soap film. Ernst Robert Reifenberg solved
such a "universal Plateau's problem" for
boundaries which are homeomorphic to
single embedded spheres.

See also
Mathematics
portal
Physics
portal

Double Bubble conjecture

Dirichlet principle
Plateau's laws
 Stretched grid method
Bernstein's problem

References
1. Bombieri, Enrico; de Giorgi, Ennio; Giusti,
Enrico (1969), "Minimal cones and the
Bernstein problem", Inventiones
Mathematicae, 7 (3): 243–268,
doi:10.1007/BF01404309 (https://doi.org/1
0.1007%2FBF01404309) , S2CID 59816096
(https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:
59816096)

2. Chang, Sheldon Xu-Dong (1988), "Two-

dimensional area minimizing integral
currents are classical minimal surfaces",
Journal of the American Mathematical
Society, 1 (4): 699–778,
 doi:10.2307/1990991 (https://doi.org/10.2
307%2F1990991) , JSTOR 1990991 (http
s://www.jstor.org/stable/1990991)

3. http://www.math.stonybrook.edu/~bishop/
classes/math638.F20/deLellis_survey_BU
MI_24.pdf

4. Harrison, Jenny; Pugh, Harrison (2017),

"General Methods of Elliptic Minimization",
Calculus of Variations and Partial
Differential Equations, 56 (1),
arXiv:1603.04492 (https://arxiv.org/abs/16
03.04492) , doi:10.1007/s00526-017-1217-
6 (https://doi.org/10.1007%2Fs00526-017-
1217-6) , S2CID 119704344 (https://api.se
manticscholar.org/CorpusID:119704344)

5. De Lellis, Camillo; Ghiraldin, Francesco;

Maggi, Francesco (2017), "A direct
 approach to Plateau's problem" (https://ww
w.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/141580/1/DeLDeR
Ghi_15apr17.pdf) (PDF), Journal of the
European Mathematical Society, 19 (8):
2219–2240, doi:10.4171/JEMS/716 (http
s://doi.org/10.4171%2FJEMS%2F716) ,
S2CID 29820759 (https://api.semanticscho
lar.org/CorpusID:29820759)

Douglas, Jesse (1931). "Solution of the

problem of Plateau" (https://doi.org/10.
2307%2F1989472) . Trans. Amer. Math.
Soc. 33 (1): 263–321.
doi:10.2307/1989472 (https://doi.org/1
0.2307%2F1989472) . JSTOR 1989472
(https://www.jstor.org/stable/198947
2) .
Reifenberg, Ernst Robert (1960).
"Solution of the {Plateau} problem for m-
dimensional surfaces of varying
topological type" (https://doi.org/10.100
7%2Fbf02547186) . Acta Mathematica.
104 (2): 1–92. doi:10.1007/bf02547186
(https://doi.org/10.1007%2Fbf0254718
6) .
Fomenko, A.T. (1989). The Plateau
Problem: Historical Survey (https://archiv
e.org/details/plateauproblem0000fom
e) . Williston, VT: Gordon & Breach.
ISBN 978-2-88124-700-2.
Morgan, Frank (2009). Geometric
Measure Theory: a Beginner's Guide.
Academic Press. ISBN 978-0-12-
374444-9.
O'Neil, T.C. (2001) [1994], "Geometric
Measure Theory" (https://www.encyclop
ediaofmath.org/index.php?title=Geomet
ric_Measure_Theory) , Encyclopedia of
Mathematics, EMS Press

Radó, Tibor (1930). "On Plateau's

problem". Ann. of Math. 2. 31 (3): 457–
469. doi:10.2307/1968237 (https://doi.o
rg/10.2307%2F1968237) .
JSTOR 1968237 (https://www.jstor.org/
stable/1968237) .
Struwe, Michael (1989). Plateau's
Problem and the Calculus of Variations.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press. ISBN 978-0-691-08510-4.
Almgren, Frederick (1966). Plateau's
problem, an invitation to varifold
geometry (https://archive.org/details/pla
teausproblemi0000almg) . New York-
Amsterdam: Benjamin. ISBN 978-0-821-
82747-5.
Harrison, Jenny; Pugh, Harrison (2016).
Open Problems in Mathematics
(Plateau's Problem). Springer.
arXiv:1506.05408 (https://arxiv.org/abs/
1506.05408) . doi:10.1007/978-3-319-
32162-2 (https://doi.org/10.1007%2F97
 8-3-319-32162-2) . ISBN 978-3-319-
32160-8.

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