On the Conditional Existence of Foliations by CMC and Willmore Type Half-Spheres

Abstract

We study half-spheres with small radii sitting on the boundary of a smooth bounded domain while meeting it orthogonally. Even though it is known that there exist families of CMC and Willmore type half-spheres near a nondegenerate critical point p of the domains boundaries mean curvature, it is unknown in both cases whether these provide a foliation of any deleted neighborhood of p. We prove that this is not guaranteed and establish a criterion in terms of the boundaries geometry that ensures or prevents the respective surfaces from providing such a foliation. This perhaps surprising phenomenon of conditional foliations is absent in the closely related Riemannian setting, where a foliation is guaranteed. We show how this unconditional foliation arises from symmetry considerations and how these fail to apply to the 'domain-setting'.