Stability of axial free-boundary hyperplanes in circular cones

Abstract

Given an axially-symmetric, $(n+1)$-dimensional convex cone $\Omega \subset {\mathbb{R}}^{n+1}$, we study the stability of the free-boundary minimal surface $\Sigma$ obtained by intersecting $\Omega$ with a $n$-plane that contains the axis of $\Omega$. In the case $n=2$, $\Sigma$ is always unstable, as a special case of the vertex-skipping property that we recently proved in another article. Conversely, as soon as $n\ge 3$ and $\Omega$ has a sufficiently large aperture (depending on the dimension $n$), we show that $\Sigma$ is strictly stable. For our stability analysis, we introduce a Lipschitz flow ${\Sigma }_t[f]$ of deformations of $\Sigma$ associated with a compactly-supported, scalar deformation field $f$, which satisfies the key property $\partial {\Sigma }_t[f]\subset \partial \Omega$ for all $t\in \mathbb{R}$. Then, we compute the lower-right second variation of the area of $\Sigma$ along the flow, and ultimately show that it is positive by exploiting its connection with a functional inequality studied in the context of reaction-diffusion problems.