Min-max theory for constant mean curvature hypersurfaces

Abstract

In this paper, we develop a min-max theory for the construction of constant mean curvature (CMC) hypersurfaces of prescribed mean curvature in an arbitrary closed manifold. As a corollary, we prove the existence of a nontrivial, smooth, closed, almost embedded, CMC hypersurface of any given mean curvature $c$. Moreover, if $c$ is nonzero then our min-max solution always has multiplicity one.