Energy Estimates for the Tracefree Curvature of Willmore Surfaces and Applications

Abstract

We prove an $\epsilon$-regularity result for the tracefree curvature of a Willmore surface with bounded second fundamental form. For such a surface, we obtain a pointwise control of the tracefree second fundamental form from a small control of its $L^2$-norm.Several applications are investigated. Notably, we derive a gap statement for surfaces of the aforementioned type. We further apply our results to deduce regularity results for conformal minimal spacelike immersions into the de Sitter space $S^{4,1}$.