Existence of isovolumetric extremals for capillarity functionals

Abstract

Capillarity functionals are parameter invariant functionals defined on classes of two-dimensional parametric surfaces in R3 as the sum of the area integral and a non homogeneous term of suitable form. Here we consider the case of a class of non homogenous terms vanishing at infinity for which the corresponding capillarity functional has no volume-constrained S2-type minimal surface. Using variational techniques, we prove existence of extremals characterized as saddle-type critical points.