The Renormalized Area--Willmore Relation

Abstract

In [1, Proposition 8.1], Alexakis and Mazzeo showed that the renormalized area of minimal surfaces in the hyperbolic space $\mathbb{H}^3$ approaching the ideal boundary $\partial_\infty\mathbb{H}^3$ is the negative of the Willmore energy of their Euclidean conformal compactifications. In this paper, we investigate whether there are other geometric surface equations for which these two quantities satisfy a universal proportionality relation. We answer this question in the affirmative by extending the Alexakis--Mazzeo result to a broader class of geometric equations containing, as two distinguished cases, the equations defining generalized singular minimal surfaces in $\mathbb{R}^3$ and linear Weingarten surfaces in $\mathbb{H}^3$. Moreover, for rotational linear Weingarten surfaces, we express both energies in terms of generalized hyperelliptic integrals and show that their doubles form a family of rotational tori in $\mathbb{R}^3$ whose Willmore energies realize all values in $(2π^2,\infty)$, with a particular subfamily converging to the Clifford torus in $\mathcal{W}^{2,p}$ for every $1\leq p<\infty$, as the optimal value $2π^2$ is approached.