Paper 3, Section II, H

Differential Geometry
Part II, 2009

(a) State and prove the Theorema Egregium.

(b) Let XX be a minimal surface without boundary in R3\mathbb{R}^{3} which is closed as a subset of R3\mathbb{R}^{3}, and assume that XX is not contained in a closed ball. Let Π\Pi be a plane in R3\mathbb{R}^{3} with the property that DnD_{n} \rightarrow \infty as nn \rightarrow \infty, where for n=0,1,n=0,1, \ldots,

Dn=infxX,d(x,0)nd(x,Π)D_{n}=\inf _{x \in X, d(x, 0) \geqslant n} d(x, \Pi)

Here d(x,y)d(x, y) denotes the Euclidean distance between xx and yy and d(x,Π)=infyΠd(x,y)d(x, \Pi)=\inf _{y \in \Pi} d(x, y). Assume moreover that XX contains no planar points. Show that XX intersects Π\Pi.