CUNY Graduate Center Differential Geometry Seminar presents

Quadratic differentials and minimal surfaces in hyperbolic space

John Velling

Brooklyn College, C.U.N.Y.

Wednesday, April 25

2:45-3:45 pm, Room 4419

On each complete minimal surface in three dimensional hyperbolic space, the second fundamental form splits into conjugate conformal and anticonformal parts. As the universal cover of the surface is conformally the disc, we may pull back the conformal part to the disc. The question to be addressed is the following: Are there holomorphic quadratic differentials which do not occur in such a fashion? This is the existence part of a natural existence/uniqueness question about representing complete minimal surfaces in three dimensional hyperbolic space.