An instability criterion for volume-preserving area-stationary surfaces with singular curves in sub-Riemannian $3$-space forms

Abstract

We study stable surfaces, i.e., second order minima of the area for variations of fixed volume, in sub-Riemannian space forms of dimension $3$. We prove a stability inequality and provide sufficient conditions ensuring instability of volume-preserving area-stationary $C^2$ surfaces with a non-empty singular set of curves. Combined with previous results, this allows to describe any complete, orientable, embedded and stable $C^2$ surface $\Sigma$ in the Heisenberg group $\mathbb{H}^1$ and the sub-Riemannian sphere $\mathbb{S}^3$ of constant curvature $1$. In $\mathbb{H}^1$ we conclude that $\Sigma$ is a Euclidean plane, a Pansu sphere or congruent to the hyperbolic paraboloid $t=xy$. In $\mathbb{S}^3$ we deduce that $\Sigma$ is one of the Pansu spherical surfaces discovered in [28]. As a consequence, such spheres are the unique $C^2$ solutions to the sub-Riemannian isoperimetric problem in $\mathbb{S}^3$.