Mathematics

The conformal Willmore functional (which is conformal invariant in general Riemannian manifolds $(M,g)$ is studied with a perturbative method: the Lyapunov–Schmidt reduction. Existence of critical points is shown in ambient manifolds $(\mathbb{R}^3,g_\epsilon)$ – where $g_\epsilon$ is a metric close and asymptotic to the Euclidean one. With the same technique a non-existence result is proved in general Riemannian manifolds $(M,g)$ of dimension three.