Minimal disks bounded by three straight lines in Euclidean space and trinoids in hyperbolic space

Abstract

Following Riemann's idea, we prove the existence of a minimal disk in Euclidean space bounded by three lines in generic position and with three helicoidal ends of angles less than $\pi$. In the case of general angles, we prove that there exist at most four such minimal disks, we give a sufficient condition of existence in terms of a system of three equations of degree 2, and we give explicit formulas for the Weierstrass data in terms of hypergeometric functions. Finally, we construct constant-mean-curvature-one trinoids in hyperbolic space by the method of the conjugate cousin immersion.

33 pages, 8 figures