Existence of classical minimal surfaces in $4$ and $5$-manifolds

Abstract

We prove that every closed Riemannian $4$ or $5$-manifold $M$ contains a branched immersed closed minimal surface. That is, there exists a non-constant weakly conformal harmonic map from some closed Riemann surface into $M$. We rely on the existence of multisections in dimensions $4$ and $5$ to generate a non-trivial class of sweepouts of $M$ by mappings from a closed surface $S$ of genus at least $2$. To each sweepout in a minimizing sequence within the class, through the intermediary of quasiconformal maps of the upper half-plane, we associate a family of hyperbolic metrics on $S$ with respect to which the mappings in the sweepout have nearly equal energy and area. The harmonic replacement method of Colding and Minicozzi is then applied to obtain a min-max sequence that converges to a bubble tree of branched minimal immersions.