New progress towards three open conjectures in geometric analysis

Abstract

This thesis, like all of Gaul, is divided into three parts. In Chapter One, I study minimal surfaces in R⁴ with quadratic area growth. I give the first partial result towards a conjecture of Meeks and Wolf on asymptotic behavior of such surfaces at infinity. In particular, I prove that under mild conditions, these surfaces must have unique tangent cones at infinity. In Chapter Two, I give new results towards a conjecture of Schoen on minimal hypersurfaces in R⁴. I prove that if a stable minimal hypersurface E with weight given by its Jacobi field has a stable minimal weighted subsurface, then E must be a hyperplane inside of R⁴. Finally, in Chapter Three, I do an in-depth analysis of the nodal set results of Logonov-Malinnikova. I give explicit bounds for the eigenvalue exponent in terms of dimension, and make a slight improvement on their methodology.