A Branch Set Stratification for Stationary Varifolds with Epsilon-Regularity

Abstract

Suppose $\mathcal{V}$ is a class of stationary integral $n$-varifolds in $B^{n+k}_2(0)\subset\mathbb{R}^{n+k}$ which is closed under weak limits, homotheties, rotations, and disjoint decomposition, and suppose that $\mathcal {V}$ satisfies an $ε$-regularity property near planes of (integer) multiplicity $\leq Q\in \{2,3,\dotsc\}$. This last condition, more precisely, requires that there be a constant $ε= ε({\mathcal V}, Q) \in (0, 1)$ such that if $V\in \mathcal{V}$ is, in the unit cylinder ${\mathbb R}^{k} \times B_{1}^{n}(0)$, $ε$-close as varifolds to the plane $\{0\} \times {\mathbb R}^{n}$ taken with multiplicity $\leq Q$ then, in the half-cylinder ${\mathbb R}^{k} \times B_{1/2}^{n}(0)$, $V$ is represented by the graph of a Lipschitz multi-valued function over $B_{1/2}^{n}(0)$ with uniform quantitative estimates of a $C^{1,α}$ nature. For any varifold in such a class $\mathcal{V}$, we prove that the set of branch points with density $\leq Q$ has Hausdorff dimension $\leq n-2$. By choosing suitable $\mathcal{V}$, a direct consequence of this result and the recently established regularity theorems of the second and third authors (one of which being joint with Becker-Kahn) is that if $V$ is a stationary integral $n$-varifold which is either: (a) represented by the graph of a $2$-valued Lipschitz function; or (b) codimension one, stable, and with no classical singularities of density $<Q$, then the Hausdorff dimension of the density $Q$ branch set ($Q=2$ in (a)) is at most $n-2$. Our proof utilises the planar frequency function introduced by the first and third authors in their work on area minimising currents, and thus does not require the Almgren center manifold for the analysis of branch points except in a single, geometrically canonical case where the center manifold satisfies additional simplifying properties.