The prevalence of tori amongst constant mean curvature planes in R3

Abstract

Constant mean curvature (CMC) tori in Euclidean 3-space are described by an algebraic curve, called the spectral curve, together with a line bundle on this curve and a point on $ S ^ 1 $, called the Sym point. For a given spectral curve the possible choices of line bundle and Sym point are easily described. The space of spectral curves of tori is totally disconnected. Hence to characterise the "moduli space" of CMC tori one should, for each genus $g$, determine the closure $\overline{\mathcal{P}^g}$ of spectral curves of CMC tori within the spectral curves of CMC planes having spectral genus $g$. We identify a real subvariety $\mathcal{R}^g$ and a subset $\mathcal{S}^g\subseteq\mathcal{R}^g $ such that $\mathcal{R}^g_{\text{max}}\subseteq\overline{\mathcal{P}^g}\subseteq\mathcal{S}^g$, where $\mathcal{R}^g_{\text{max}}$ denotes the points of $\mathcal{R}^g$ having maximal dimension. The lowest spectral genus for which tori exist is $g=2$ and in this case $\mathcal{R}^2=\mathcal{R}^2_{\text{max}}=\overline{\mathcal{P}^2}=\mathcal{S}^2$. For $g>2 $, we conjecture that $\mathcal{R}^g\supsetneq\mathcal{R}^g_{\text{max}}=\mathcal{S}^g$. We give a number of alternative characterisations of $\mathcal{R}^g_{\text{max}}$ and in particular introduce a new integer invariant of a CMC plane of finite type, called its winding number.