Estimating the Morse index of free boundary minimal hypersurfaces through covering arguments

Abstract

Abstract Given a compact Riemannian manifold, of dimension between 3 and 7, with boundary, we adapt Song’s covering method to the free boundary case to show that the Morse index of a free boundary minimal hypersurface grows linearly with the sum of its Betti numbers, where the constant of growth depends on an upper bound on the area of the free boundary minimal hypersurface in question.