Existence and structure of P-area minimizing surfaces in the Heisenberg group

Abstract

We study existence and structure of P-area minimizing surfaces in the Heisenberg group under Dirichlet and Neumann boundary conditions. We show that there exists an underlying vector field N that characterized existence and structure of P-area minimizing surfaces. This vector field exists even if there is no P-area minimizing surface satisfying the prescribed boundary conditions. We prove that if ∂Ω satisfies a so called Barrier condition, it is sufficient to guarantee existence of such surfaces. Our approach is completely different from previous methods in the literature and makes major progress in understanding existence of P-area minimizing surfaces.