Reflection principle for lightlike line segments on maximal surfaces

Abstract

As in the case of minimal surfaces in the Euclidean 3-space, the reflection principle for maximal surfaces in the Lorentz-Minkowski 3-space asserts that if a maximal surface has a spacelike line segment L, the surface is invariant under the $$180^\circ$$ -rotation with respect to L. However, such a reflection property does not hold for lightlike line segments on the boundaries of maximal surfaces in general. In this paper, we show some kind of reflection principle for lightlike line segments on the boundaries of maximal surfaces when lightlike line segments are connecting shrinking singularities. As an application, we construct various examples of periodic maximal surfaces with lightlike lines from tessellations of $$\mathbb {R}^2$$ .