The asymptotic blow-up of a surface in Euclidean 3-space

Abstract

Given a smoothly immersed surface in Euclidean (or affine) 3-space, the asymptotic directions define a subset in the Grassmann bundle of unoriented one-dimensional subspaces over the surface. This links the Euler characteristic of the region where the Gauss curvature is nonpositive with the index of singularities in a natural line field defined on this subset. To apply this we need only identify mechanisms which restrict the index of the singularities. In Section 2.1 we show that specific configurations of nonpositive Gauss curvature cannot be realized by an immersed surface and that specific configurations in 2-sphere cannot be realized as Gauss images of surfaces. In Section 2.2 we prove an existence theorem for surfaces which satisfy regularity conditions and a Symplectic Monge Ampere PDE. In general, a PDE of this type will not restrict the indices of the singularities over a solution. However, we show that over a surface of nonzero constant mean curvature the indices are restricted and, hence, that specific configurations of nonpositive Gauss curvature cannot be realized by a constant mean curvature surface.