Nonorientable minimal surfaces with catenoidal ends

Abstract

Starting from the pioneering work by Meeks, complete nonorientable minimal surfaces with finite total curvature have been studied by many researchers. However, it seems that there are no known examples all of whose ends are embedded except for Kusner’s flat-ended N-noids. In this paper, we show the existence of a 1-parameter family of complete $${\mathbf{Z}}_N$$ -invariant conformal minimal immersions from finitely punctured real projective planes into $${\mathbf{R}}^3$$ , each of which has $$N+1$$ catenoidal ends, for any odd integer $$N\ge 3$$ . This family gives a deformation from an $$(N+1)$$ -noid with N catenoidal ends and a planar end to Kusner’s flat-ended N-noid. We also give a nonexistence result for such surfaces for any even integer $$N\ge 2$$ .