Existence of unstable minimal surfaces of annulus type in manifolds

Abstract

Unstable minimal surfaces are the unstable stationary points of the Dirichlet-Integral. In order to obtain unstable solutions, the method of the gradient flow together with the minimax-principle is generally used. The application of this method for minimal surfaces in the Euclidean spacce was presented in [St1]. We extend this theory for obtaining unstable minimal surfaces in Riemannian manifolds. In particular, we handle minimal surfaces of annulus type, i.e. we prescribe two Jordan curves of class C^{3} in a Riemannian manifold and prove the existence of unstable minimal surfaces of annulus type bounded by these curves.